I'm Bored, You're Amorous
by PachucaSunrise
Summary: When Cartman finds out that Butters has a crush on Kenny, he comes up with a nefarious scheme: make Butters believe that Kenny is in love with him.  Butters/Kenny, CartmanxWendy, and Stan/Kyle. COMPLETE
1. Prologue

**A/N: **Hey, PachucaSunrise here. This is the first fanfic I've uploaded to , but not the first fanfic I've ever written, so please go easy on me in the reviews. There won't be very much Bunny interaction in the first couple chapters, mostly because there are other characters involved and I want to get that out of the way first, but rest assured: there _will _be Bunny. Oh, and if anyone's wondering about the title of the story, I got it from an awesome song with the same name by Dear and the Headlights. Great band.

**Pairing: **Kenny/Butters, and maybe some Stan/Kyle or WendyxCartman on the side if the opportunity should arise to include them.

**Warning: **Obscene, foul-mouthed 16 year old boys, but this is South Park so that shouldn't be too surprising.

**Prologue**

Cartman had come up with many brilliant schemes in his 16 years of life, but he considered this one to be _golden_.

It all started at a sleepover at the house of Butters Stotch - and yes, he and Butters _did _still have sleepovers, shut up. Butters was too naïve to see anything unusual about it, and although Cartman thought that sleepovers were "totally queer now, you gahs", he went along with it because that meant he got to play pranks on the blonde boy, and in his mind that canceled out the queerness.

So that's why he was now in Butters' bedroom, watching the aforementioned playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

"Jesus Christ, Butters," he remarked distastefully as he peered over the other boy's shoulder to get a good look at the computer screen, "You still play this shitty-ass game?"

Butters frowned and looked away, mashing his knuckles together nervously. "Wuh-well, it's the only game my parents will let me play, 'cause they think that all the other games are just too violent for me," he explained.

"Your parents are fucking lame, dude," Cartman stated as he flopped down on his Steve Urkel sleeping bag. Butters did nothing to confirm or deny this statement, instead focusing all his attention on getting to the next level. Cartman clicked his tongue disapprovingly at the silence and decided to rant until he got a response from Butters in one way or another. "I'm being seriouslah here. They suck dick. Probably literally, in your Dad's case."

Butters turned halfway in his seat to look at Cartman and shot him his best angry look, though it came out more like a pout, much to the amusement of the boy on the receiving end. "Ya shouldn't be insulting my parents like that, Eric. I'm starting to get real steamed up about it, and you won't like me when I'm angry, oh no you won't!"

"Yeah yeah, whatever, Butters," Cartman said, unfazed, and waved his hand dismissively. "I've seen you throw a bitch fit before, and let me tell you, I wasn't impressed." Just then, a large growl issued from his rotund belly, effectively distracting Cartman in a way that only food could. "Well, Butters," he began as he stood up and sauntered toward the door, "as much as I'd like to watch you get your ass handed to you at a game meant for 7 year old girls, food beckons me to your kitchen."

"Gee, Eric," Butters replied with surprise, glancing down at the clock in the corner of the computer screen, "It's already 9:30! If you eat now, it'll be bad for your health, and you'll probably gain lots of weight!"

Cartman paused, his hand resting on the doorknob as he gave the blonde a blank look. "Do I look like someone who gives a rat's ass?" Butters was going to dignify that with a response, but before he could even open his mouth, the tubby boy was gone. He just sighed and went back to collecting coconuts so he could get to the next level.

"How's about Monopoly?"

"Laaaame."

"Okay… hm… Candyland?"

"Gay."

Butters turned away from his shelf of games and tilted his head to one side as he studied Cartman. The other boy was once again sitting on his sleeping bag, but this time he had a box of Cheesy Poofs (which was, of course, now half-empty, even though Mrs. Stotch had just bought it yesterday). Butters watched in dismay as crumbs fell from Cartman's hands and mouth and onto the sleeping bag. Although a minute detail to other teenagers, it was practically life or death for Butters.

"Eric, I sure hope you aren't getting any of that on the carpet," he voiced his concerns, gesturing at the messy sight before him. "My parents might ground me!"

Cartman rolled his eyes and shoveled more of the cheesy snacks into his mouth. "Relax, dude, and stop being such a goddamn Melvin. I'm not getting any crumbs on your precious carpet," he said around a mouthful of food. Butters gave the carpet one last critical look to make sure Eric was telling the truth before he turned back to the shelf of games.

"Let's see here…," he mumbled to himself as he scanned the crammed contents of the shelf. When his eyes fell upon one he liked, his whole face lit up. "Oh boy, oh boy! Mousetrap, my favorite!" With a spin and a dramatic flourish, Butters presented the box to Cartman. The other boy merely looked at it uninterestedly, gave it a light shove, and went back to eating.

"Weak," he stated simply.

The radiant smile which had been plastered upon Butters' face quickly diminished. Cartman had an uncanny ability to squash his hopes and dreams, but for some reason, he still desperately wanted his approval. "C'mon, Eric, help me out here!" he implored, spreading his arms wide. "If you don't wanna play board games, well, what _do_ you wanna do?"

Cartman momentarily stopped eating and placed a thumb and forefinger on his large chin as if in deep thought. He _could _continue to do a bunch of meaningless crap with Butters, but why bullshit around and waste time when he already had a prank in mind that was just waiting to be executed?

"I'm _tired_, Butters," Cartman whined, raising his arms above his head and yawning for added effect. "Can we just go to sleep?"

The blonde blinked, surprise evident on his youthful features. That had been just about the _last _thing he was expecting Cartman to say. "Well, if that's what you want, Eric, it's fine by me! 'Sides, I'm feelin' a little tired myself," he said, his last words preceding a yawn. He then disappeared into the bathroom to brush his teeth and get changed, leaving Cartman alone in the bedroom. _Finally, some peace and quiet,_ he thought, although this was brought to an abrupt end when the musical strains of "If You Leave Me Now", as performed by Butters Stotch, drifted through the door.

"Shut _up_," Cartman hissed through gritted teeth as he muffled the sound with a pillow. Now that he was back to relative peace and quiet, Cartman could think. After exactly 32 pranks, he was quite confident that Butters was indeed a heavy sleeper and wouldn't wake up if a train barreled right through the room. However, the last few times he had tried pranking Butters in his sleep, his victim had started having nightmares and Cartman would have to abandon the prank in case he woke up and caught Cartman in the act. "Yes, yes, I'll have to work fast this time," he muttered to himself decidedly as he rolled onto his back.

A few minutes later, Butters reemerged, wearing - _oh my God, is this kid for real?_ - blue pajamas with bunnies and hearts all over. Cartman just pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation (a habit he had picked up from Stan) as the other boy, still singing, strolled across the room and got in his bed.

"'Night, Eric!" he called as he turned off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Then began the waiting game: Cartman lay still in his sleeping bag, listening to Butters toss and turn until he finally grew still after approximately 24 minutes. Cartman wasted no time. He pulled out a flashlight, threw back the cover of his sleeping bag, rolled a few times (the _Mission Impossible _theme playing in his head all the while), then sprung to his feet. A quick glance at the bed confirmed that Butters was indeed asleep. Cartman smirked and tip-toed over to the computer desk where Butters also kept all of his supplies and personal belongings, then opened the first drawer and flipped on the flashlight. He had checked earlier; all of the things he needed for the prank were already in there. Now he just had to find them again.

But as he noisily rummaged through the drawer, the items were suddenly very elusive. "Goddamnit!" he hissed as he grew more and more frustrated. There were pencils, erasers, construction paper, old birthday cards, and tons of other crap that was completely useless to Cartman, but there was nothing he actually needed. Just as he was about to pull the hair out of his head in chagrin, his flashlight illuminated something else of interest: a marble notebook with the words 'BUTTERS' DIARY' written in a white square in the center. For a moment, he could only stand there and stare at it, jaw slacked slightly. Then full comprehension hit him like a big yellow school bus and it was all he could do to not jump up and down and whoop joyously. As much as he liked pranking, Eric Cartman _loved _blackmail with a fiery passion, and this diary practically _reeked_ of potential blackmail material (and, for some reason, pickles).

He sat down at the desk and laid out the book, taking a deep, steadying breath before opening it. The first few pages were mostly filled with cutesy little doodles, including some cartoonish sketches of their friends: there was Stan and Kyle, smiling and waving and looking friendly as usual, a rather unflattering Cartman, but mostly there was Kenny. _Lots _of Kenny. And not even pictures of Kenny dying, like Cartman would draw and show to Kenny to piss him off. There were pictures of Kenny smiling, Kenny laughing, Kenny eating a pop tart. They were more detailed than the other drawings, and for a second, Cartman almost admired Butters' artistic ability. But then he scoffed and continued flipping pages. He stopped at an entry titled 'October 5th':

'_Today was a good day. I only got homework in one class, AND I found out I aced my science test, whoopee! When I told my parents, they said that they wouldn't have to ground me, which made me real thankful, and then we went to eat at my favorite restaurant: Bennigan's!' _

Cartman sighed and rolled his eyes. _Jesus Christ, how boring was this kid?_ He skimmed through the next 20 pages or so, looking for anything that he could possibly use to make Butters' life a living hell, but all he got were obnoxiously long accounts of the most mundane things, such as finding a ladybug on the windowsill or a double rainbow or some shit like that. Cartman snorted in distaste and rested his elbow against the surface of the desk, then leaned his cheek into his hand as he stared blankly at the diary.

"The night has not been kind to me," Cartman muttered despondently. He turned around in the swivel chair to face the slightly open window, extending his arms toward the moon pleadingly. "What have I done to deserve this? All I want is to know Butters' deepest darkest secrets so I can use them to humiliate him. Is that really so much to ask?"

Just then, as if in reply to Cartman's query, a rather large gust of wind blew in and caused the pages to turn. By the time he had spun back around to look at the diary, it was opened to a page conveniently titled 'My Deepest, Darkest Secret'.

"Oh, sweet Jesus, thank you," Cartman whispered as his eyes began to devour the text.

'_Dear Diary:_

_Now, I don't normally share this kind of stuff with people, mostly 'cause I think they wouldn't understand, or they'd make fun of me. But I can trust you, right? Well, here goes…_

_I love Kenny McCormick.' _

Cartman's eyes expanded to nearly the size of saucers. He reread the sentence once. He reread it three more times. He held the diary right up to his face, held it away again, and squinted. The sentence was still the same.

"Ho…ly… _fuck_."

'_Yep, I said it! I love Kenny McCormick, boy howdy do I! I know we're not as close as Stan and Kyle or nothing, but he's the only person I know who's never made me feel like shit. Uh-oh, I just said a bad word, but I don't even care if my parents find out and ground me. I'd go through a million groundings for Kenny!' _

At the bottom was a simplistic drawing of Kenny and Butters holding hands. The cuteness nearly made Cartman gag, but the triumph he felt for discovering such an intimate secret overwhelmed his disgust. Almost immediately after he finished reading the entry, proverbial light bulbs were going off in his head.

This was definitely better than any prank.


	2. Fag Hair

**A/N: **Thanks for all the reviews for the prologue! I really appreciate them. Don't worry too much, Cartman's plan will (eventually) backfire like it usually does. Sorry if there are any mistakes for this chapter; I've had a really busy week with shitloads of tests and Homecoming, so I've been trying to write in between all this other crap going on.

**Disclaimer: ***Craig voice* I don't own South Park, but if I did, I would be soooo happy.

**Chapter 1**

Kenny didn't have very good luck.

Of course, he knew this already. It was kind of hard to _not _realize your extreme lack of good fortune when you had been dying on a semi-regular basis since the tender age of 8 years old. But still, there were some days where life just seemed to bludgeon him over the head with its all-encompassing suckitude, just to remind him that his existence wasn't - and could never be - completely normal.

Today was one of those days.

It had all started when a drive-by shooting woke him up at 5 AM (hey, he lived in the ghetto, even if it _was _just a lower-class neighborhood in a little podunk mountain town). His house actually hadn't been the target, but a few stray bullets had still embedded themselves in Kenny's bedroom wall and shattered what was left of his window. After that significant rush of adrenaline, he did what any normal person would have done: gone into the kitchen to get some breakfast.

There were only two boxes of cereal in the pantry, and both were cheap-ass store brand rip-offs of more famous brands. Kenny, who was definitely not a morning person and so was already a little grumpy, scowled at this as he pulled the box of Meijer Toasted Oats from the shelf. _Why couldn't they have just bought some goddamn Cheerios? _the teen wondered sourly as he poured it into a green plastic bowl.

He shuffled over to the fridge to get some milk, but as he opened the cap and held the jug above the bowl in 'ready-to-pour' position, he realized that the milk looked like shit and smelled like it, too. A quick glance at the cap confirmed his suspicion: it had expired nearly one month ago. Kenny wrinkled his nose in disgust and dumped it in the trash. He was poor, not desperate, for God's sake.

The house was quiet for once as Kenny sat down in the living room to eat his dry cereal. His parents had celebrated their anniversary last night, so they would probably remain unconscious in a drunken stupor for the next 3 hours. Kevin, meanwhile, had been kicked out for running a crack house in his bedroom and was staying at a friend's place for the next few days, and Karen didn't start school until 8:30.

He turned on the black and white TV and watched the news for awhile. Apparently there had been a ManBearPig sighting in Colorado State Forest, which conveniently coincided with the mysterious disappearance of Al Gore. Kenny laughed at the irony as he finished up his cereal and deposited the empty bowl in the kitchen.

The next hour passed by uneventfully. He brushed his teeth, took a cold shower (they couldn't afford hot water), got dressed, and flipped through some old porn magazines to pass the time. When he finally ran out of things to do, he slipped on his ratty old parka and ventured outside. As usual, the air was cold and crisp as the first rays of dawn peaked out from behind the mountains, illuminating South Park in its murky early morning half-light. Kenny zipped up his coat, crammed his hands into his pockets and gingerly stepped over his sleeping neighbor, who had evidently wrapped himself up in a Confederate flag and passed out on the McCormick's front yard sometime last night. Not that Kenny really minded; since his yard had a reputation as a dumping ground for all the neighborhood alcoholics, he'd had more than one blowsy drunk chick and even a few guys stumble into his bedroom. It all evened out as far as he was concerned.

Although Kenny had a longer trek to the bus stop than the other boys, when their familiar old haunt came into view, there was no one there. He frowned a little at this but otherwise didn't think too much about it. It was quite possible that he was just early, and Stan, Kyle and Cartman would show up in due time.

He leaned against the yellow sign, digging around in his pocket for the lighter and pack of cigarettes he had found while snooping through his brother's underwear drawer (which wasn't as bad as it sounded, honestly). _Might as well have a smoke when no one is around to bitch at me about lung cancer, _Kenny thought as he attempted to click on the lighter, and because he was having _such _good luck so far, it was all out of fluid. He made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat as he pocketed both the cigarettes and the lighter and slid to the ground.

It was oppressively quiet and boring without his friends. There weren't even any animal sounds coming from the nearby forest because last week, Kyle's Jewfro had morphed into a murderous, tree-uprooting monster and gone on a rampage when the boy tried to get it cut.

Yeah, it didn't really make sense to Kenny either. Talk about unmanageable hair, huh?

By the time the school bus came chugging down the road, there was still no sign of Stan, Kyle and Cartman. Kenny wracked his brain for any explanation of their absence - had they gone on some cross-country expedition and Kenny just didn't get the memo? - but he came up with nothing, so he reluctantly boarded the bus alone.

"Ooh, Kenny! Over here!"

Kenny's head snapped up, hearing his name being called by a familiar voice. Realization dawned on him and he grinned as he made his way down the cluttered aisle toward a boy in a turquoise jacket. Butters was sitting in the middle section of the bus, patting the empty space next to him invitingly and smiling.

"Hey, Butters," Kenny greeted as he sat down. "What's up with the hat?" he asked, pointing at the faded Colorado Rockies cap perching atop Butters' head.

The corners of Butters' mouth turned downward in a frown. "Oh. Um…" he hedged, rubbing his knuckles together embarrassedly. "M-my parents made me wear it. They said that my hair made me look like a… like a fag, so I have to cover it up with this hat." He gestured at the headwear and gave Kenny a wobbly smile.

Kenny blinked, tilting his head to one side. "Did you get your hair cut or something?"

"Nope."

"Did you do _anything _different with it?"

"No, not that I know of, at least…"

"Okay, so let me get this straight," Kenny prefaced, feeling more confused than ever. "Your parents are punishing you because they _just_ decided that the hairstyle you've had for the last 8 years makes you look like a fag."

Butters paused, chewing on the side of his cheek thoughtfully. "Yeah, that musta been it."

Kenny continued to stare at Butters in shock. Of course, he had known for a while that the Stotches were the most unnecessarily strict people on Earth, but this… this just seemed a little too ridiculous, even by their standards.

With an air of determination, he leaned in close and grabbed the rim of Butters' hat.

"Kenny…" The other boy licked his lips and fidgeted nervously. "Wuh-what are ya doing?"

"Taking off your hat," Kenny replied smartly, and with a light tug, the hat was removed. He grinned and ruffled his friend's newly-exposed mop of blond hair affectionately. "What else would I be doing?" The statement was accompanied by a suggestive eyebrow wiggle, eliciting much stammering and knuckle-smashing from a flustered Butters.

"Just kidding, dude, chill out," Kenny said with a quiet chuckle as he leaned back in his seat. Butters laughed too after a few seconds and also reclined back, looking more content and like his usual self now that the hat was off.

For a few moments they sat in comfortable silence, Kenny absentmindedly tracing the purple letters on the hat and kicking the empty seat in front of them that was usually occupied by Stan and Kyle, while Butters watched the houses as they passed them by and hummed a song under his breath. Suddenly, the metaphorical light bulb went off in Kenny's head.

"Open up your window," Kenny commanded lightly.

Butters half-turned away from the fogged-up window and shot him a look of surprise. "Gee, Kenny, what would ya want me to do that for? You know the bus driver doesn't like us openin' the windows. She'll get real mad at us."

Kenny glanced over pointedly at their she-beast of a bus driver, who currently had her headphones in and was signing a very loud, very obnoxious version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

"Somehow, I don't think she's gonna hear us," he said drily, gesticulating in her direction as she launched into the chorus with gusto. Butters' eyes followed the motion and he nodded in understanding.

"Boy, she sure is bad, huh?" he remarked, then unlatched the window and pushed it up until gusts of fresh air were pouring into the sweaty and crowded bus. "Okay. Now what, Kenny?"

"Now _this_," Kenny replied, and before Butters could react, he pitched forward and shoved the hat through the small opening of the window. Butters yelped in alarm as the baseball cap was whisked away by the wind, only to land on the windshield of the infamous Darryl Weathers' car. The two of them scrambled closer to the window and craned their necks just in time to see the redneck scream and drive his pickup truck into a ditch, where it spontaneously combusted.

A few tense seconds passed by before Kenny dissolved into an uproarious fit of laughter. As soon as the initial shock subsided, Butters also became a helpless, giggling mass. They were getting odd and slightly concerned looks from everyone within a 5-foot radius, but they didn't care. They just continued laughing and laughing and leaning on each other for support.

When he had finally reined in his amusement long enough to speak again in a serious tone, Kenny wiped away a tear of hilarity and rested a gloved hand on Butters' shoulder. "Look, dude, you shouldn't let your parents treat you like that. It's not right! You should be allowed to dress and act however the hell you want without having to worry about them insulting you. You're fine just the way you are."

Butters' mouth was parted slightly, and he was regarding Kenny with such awe and pure, unabashed admiration that the teen in the orange parka had to avert his gaze. _He's acting like no one's ever complimented him before, _he thought, and a little part of his brain said, _Well, maybe he hasn't, or at least, he doesn't get them very often. _Kenny resolved to be nicer to Butters more often. God knows the kid needed a self-esteem boost.

"Aw shucks, Kenny," Butters whispered, a warm and genuine smile on his lips. "You're the nicest guy I know."

Kenny's heart melted at the words, and for once, he didn't know what to say. It wasn't very often that anyone complimented him, so on the rare occasion he _did _get one, he wasn't always sure how to react. _Maybe Butters and I are more alike than I thought. _

He ended up expressing his gratitude by patting Butters lightly on the shoulder, and when he removed his hand completely, he missed the way Butters pouted slightly at the loss of physical contact.

* * *

Cartman had arrived at school early.

He was allowed in about 10 minutes before school officially opened, making up some BS excuse to the janitor about how he needed to get in so he could have a teacher help him with last night's homework. The janitor gave him a suspicious look, knowing very well of Cartman's reputation as a troublemaker, but in the end he merely shrugged and let him in.

"Oh, thank you, sir! My education is so very important to me," Cartman said sweetly, flashing the janitor a winning smile as he strolled through the main doors. "And I must say, you're doing a spectacular job keeping the place clean."

The old custodian just waved the boy away. "Yeah yeah, get along, you brown-nosing little shit," he grumbled. All the coffee in the world couldn't prepare him for having to deal with snarky teenagers at 6:30 AM.

Cartman grinned to himself as he walked down the empty fluorescently-lit hallways. He slid one hand into the pocket of his coat, feeling the comforting bulge of paper that was tucked away in there. The anticipation of what was to come practically had Cartman salivating.

"What are you doing here so early, fatass?"

_Broflovski._

The sound of his voice alone was enough to make Cartman's blood boil. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned around to face where the voice had come from. Sure enough, Kyle was walking toward him, one eyebrow quirked challengingly, and trailing right behind him was a rather tired-looking Stan. Cartman took a deep, calming breath; he wasn't going to let his good mood get ruined by these two party poopers.

"Why hello, Kahl, I'm just going to Mrs. Titmeister's class," he lied, flashing them a phony pleasant smile. "What brings you and your butt buddy here so early on this lovely Monday morning?"

Kyle glowered at Cartman. "We're not butt buddies, okay, asshole? And you're so full of shit- Mrs. Titmeister's room is all the way on the other side of the building!" he said, gesturing in the general direction of the class.

"Yeah, dude," Stan finally piped up, rubbing at the bags underneath his eyes. "If you're going to lie right to our faces, you should probably try a little harder."

Cartman's bravado fell, briefly giving away to a frown, but he regained it quickly. "Maybe I just wanna take the long way, okay? Jesus Christ, you guys are fuckin' relentless."

"Well, you need the exercise, that's for sure," Kyle said with a wicked grin. Stan chuckled, which turned into a full-out laugh when he saw the angry look on Cartman's flushed face.

"'Ey, fuck you, Jew boy!" he yelled. "I'm not fat, I'm big-boned!"

"You must have some pretty big-ass bones, then," Stan quipped, grinning at Kyle. Both of them broke out in laughter.

Cartman gritted his teeth. "Oh yeah, _real _funny, you gahs, I've never heard _that_ one before," he drawled, sarcasm dripping from every word as he crossed his arms over his protruding chest defensively. "Why are you two assrammers here, anyway?"

"We have actual work to do, unlike you," Kyle answered. "Stan and I spent all night working on our half of an AP English project with Kenny and Butters, and now-"

"Oh, fuckshit, Butters!" Cartman exclaimed, suddenly remembering why he had to come early in the first place. Without further explanation, he turned away from Stan and Kyle and ran down the adjacent hallway, speeding off toward Butters' locker.

Stan glanced at Kyle, eyebrows raised in surprise and confusion. "Um… what the fuck just happened there?" he asked, sliding his fingers under his hat and scratching his jet-black hair.

"I have no idea," he muttered, watching as Cartman rounded the corner and disappeared. Kyle had a sort of sixth sense when it came to Cartman; Stan referred to it as his "bullshit-o-meter", and right now, it was going through the roof. "But knowing Cartman, it's probably something bad."

* * *

Just because Butters was naïve didn't mean he was stupid.

Far from it, actually. He was one of the smarter kids in the 11th grade and was taking mostly AP classes. What he lacked in street smarts he made up for in sheer academic excellence, yet despite this, some people considered him dumb simply because he was genuinely kind and innocent. But in an unpredictable town like South Park, those two things didn't get you very far, and they definitely didn't make you popular… And that's why Clyde was now treating Butters like a social leper.

"Hey, Clyde!" Butters called to the brown-haired boy walking a little farther down the hallway. Clyde looked over his shoulder curiously, but when he saw who was addressing him, he ducked his head, flipped up the collar of his red jacket and began walking a little faster. Butters' eyebrows knit together in confusion and mild annoyance. Why was Clyde ignoring him? With a renewed staunchness, he gradually sped up his pace until he was right behind Clyde.

"Hey, Clyde?" he asked again, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. Clyde jumped a little bit, casting furtive glances this way and that. When he decided that no one was watching him, he finally looked Butters in the eye.

"What's up?" he asked in his familiar nasally voice. "Whatever you have to say to me, make it quick, okay?" A gaggle of guys from the football team walked by and gave Clyde an inquisitive look, which seemed to make him even more embarrassed. Butters frowned; so _that's _how it was. Ever since Clyde had been appointed quarterback of the football team, he had started acting like "a real doucher", in the words of Cartman. Although that seemed awful rude to say, he had to agree.

"Wuh-well," he stammered out, rubbing his knuckles together nervously. "I, uh, was just wonderin' if you've seen Kenny anywhere." Kenny had been strangely quiet on the rest of the bus ride, and when they got to school, the boy had just disappeared without saying where he was going. Butters wanted to make sure he hadn't done anything to make Kenny sore at him.

Clyde blinked slowly. "Ummm, yeah. I saw him by Mr. Balzac's room a little while ago." Then, without saying anything else, he abandoned Butters in favor of catching up with his teammates.

Butters watched him go, feeling disappointment in Clyde more than anger. What had happened to the days of elementary school, when they all got along? Well, to be fair, by 4th grade most of them had either aligned themselves with Craig's gang or Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny, but at least back then none of them had to worry about being "cool". Butters just sighed and shook his head. If he thought about it too much, he'd just get sad, so he decided to turn his thoughts to something that always made him happy: Kenny. Immediately an image of the blonde-haired, parka-wearing boy popped into Butters' mind, and his stomach filled with butterflies just like it always did. Clyde had said that he was by Mr. Balzac's room, which was pretty convenient because Butters' locker was in the same hallway. He smiled at this stroke of luck as he climbed up the stairs to the second floor and carefully navigated through the crowds to reach his locker. First he would put his stuff away, gather his books for next hour, and _then _he would go find Kenny. Butters had priorities when it came to school, after all.

It wasn't until he had started putting in his locker combination that Butters noticed the envelope sticking partially out of the middle slat. "Oh?" he said to no one in particular, as that was the first thing that had come to mind. With a mixture of excitement and trepidation, he pulled it out and opened it up, not noticing Eric Cartman watching him from the other side of the hall. Inside was a piece of scrap notebook paper with writing on it.

'_Dear Butters,' _it said in messy print, _'I'm writing this to say that I like you. I think you're so cute. Do you want to be my boyfriend? –Kenny.'_

For nearly a whole minute, Butters just stood there in front of his locker, staring down at the paper in his hands. Was this real? It looked like Kenny's handwriting, that was for sure; the penmanship in this was _really _bad, just like Kenny's. But would Kenny really think and say things like this? Butters wasn't so sure about that. One part of him wanted to jump for joy, but the unconfident part of him didn't really believe Kenny liked him that way.

Before he could think about it anymore, he felt a large hand clamping down on his shoulder. Butters suppressed a shocked squeak as he turned around, only to find himself face to face with Cartman.

"Oh! Well, uh, howdy, Eric!" he said, feigning joviality as he quickly hid his hands and the letter behind his back. He didn't like that mischievous look in Cartman's eye; it reminded him of the time that Eric had challenged him to a basketball game and ended it by dunking Butters into the hoop. He _still _had marks on his ass from trying to pull himself out.

"What'cha got there, Butters?" Cartman said with a smirk, peering around Butters to try and get a glimpse of his hands. Butters gulped nervously.

He managed to stammer out a lie. "I-It's nothing." Just as the words came out of his mouth, Cartman reached out and snatched the letter from Butters' hands. He pretended to be deeply engrossed in the note, nodding and humming to himself as he held the flailing blonde against the locker with one hand.

"Agh-Eric! Please give it back!" Butters pleaded, pitifully attempting to wrest the almighty letter from Cartman's pudgy hands, but to no avail. _Gosh, this isn't working very well, _he thought to himself. It was about time to channel his inner-Professor Chaos. "Look, Eric, you better give that letter back and let me go or else I'll- oh hey Wendy, hey Token!" And just like that, his attention was completely distracted and his anger dissipated as he smiled and waved at the couple (who, of course, gave him a weird look because he was currently being pinned against the locker).

"Chill the fuck out, I'm done reading," Cartman said at last, releasing Butters from his death grip and handing the letter back to him. "I always knew Kenny would confess."

Butters blinked rapidly at this as he massaged the area of his neck that Cartman had been using as a human stress ball. "Wait… whaddaya mean you always knew?" he asked, surprised.

"Kenny has been in love with you for quite some time," Cartman explained solemnly. "He was just too chickenshit to admit it."

"Really?" Butters asked, unable to hide the hopefulness in his voice. "H-how d'ya know that?"

"Psht, it's obvious," Cartman said, waving his hand airily. "With the kind of tents he's been pitching around you I'm surprised he was able to keep his piss-poor grubby hands to himself for so long. It was only a matter of time before he succumbed to his gayness and desperate street rat tendencies."

All this newfound information was overwhelming Butters. Sure, he had always held on to the little scrap of hope that Kenny might return his feelings, but to hear that Kenny actually had obvious feelings for him that he'd been harboring for quite some time…? That was downright mindblowing.

How had he not noticed it, though? Butters thought back to all the times where him and Kenny had hung out at Stark's Pond, or gone on crazy adventures with Stan, Kyle and Cartman, or just done homework together. Sometimes there would be moments where he could've sworn that Kenny looked at him the same way he was sure he looked at Kenny, or moments where it seemed like Kenny was touching him more than one should in a platonic relationship, but then again, it was a well-known fact that Kenny McCormick had absolutely no personal bubble whatsoever and took every opportunity to cop a feel, regardless of gender.

"Aw, geez," Butters said, practically shaking with happiness and excitement. He glanced at the letter with such reverence it might as well have been a page from the Bible and then looked back up at Cartman, his eyes shining. "Are you really sure, Eric? 'Cause I hope so."

Cartman's hands, hanging limply at his sides, balled into fists, and a hiss of frustration seeped through his clenched teeth. It looked to Butters like he was starting to get real annoyed, and he flinched as Cartman grabbed his shoulders. "Butters, would I lie to you?"

Deadpan.

"Wuh-well, yeah, actually."

"Goddammit!" Cartman growled, finally losing his patience. He took his hands off the shorter boy's shoulder and ran them through his brown hair in an attempt to calm himself down again. "Butters, you're breaking my balls, dude. I'm not lying. You've got the proof in your hands."

Butters considered this for a moment, his gaze once again flicking between the letter and the obese teenager in front of him. Cartman had a point there. "You're right," he decided finally, a wide grin plastered on his face.

"Of course I am, Butters, I'm a motherfucking genius," Cartman proudly stated as if it was the most obvious truth in the world. Before Butters could object or agree, the warning bell rang, promptly signaling to the students that it was time they got their things together and went to class. "Now go find Kenny and shove your goddamn tongue down his throat already," were Cartman's final orders as he readjusted his backpack and joined the throngs of people heading to their respective classrooms.

For a moment, Butters just stood there, unconsciously hugging the letter to his chest and blushing at Cartman's suggestion. But then his _own_ sixth sense - the one that told him "uh oh, you're gonna get grounded if you don't hurry up, mister!" - kicked in and he quickly gathered up the books he needed for his AP Bio class.

Once had gotten his necessary materials together, he took off down the hallways, nervously glancing up at every digital wall-clock he passed. He noted the time, 7:12, just as he rounded the corner and found himself about 10 feet away from Kenny.

He was walking toward him, sticking out like a sore thumb in his bright orange parka. When his blue-eyed gaze fell upon Butters, a barely-visible smile poked out from his hood, and he lifted his hand in a friendly wave.

"Hey, dude!" was Kenny's muffled greeting.

The butterflies in Butters' stomach fluttered rapidly at the sight of his crush - his crush who, apparently, returned his feelings. This knowledge, combined with the sensation in his belly, was what drove Butters to make his next impulsive decision.

The distance between them closed quickly and before Kenny even had time to react, Butters was tugging on the loose orange fabric of the front of his parka and leaning in to kiss him lightly on the mouth. It was a very chaste kiss, their lips hardly brushing, but it was enough to leave Kenny shocked and Butters red-faced.

Butters averted his gaze in mild embarrassment and scuffed his shoe against the floor. "I'll see ya later, Kenny!" he said with a glowing smile as he shuffled past, completely missing the dumbfounded expression on the other boy's face.


	3. Don't Believe a Word

**A/N: **Once again, thanks for the reviews, and thanks to all you lurkers... yeah, I see you. There's no Bunny interaction in this chapter but rest assured, from the next chapter on out there's plenty of fluff. Also, the Style and Candy plotlines will be introduced soon. So, enjoy, and please don't freak out at the end of the chapter. Cartman liesssss.

**Disclaimer: **South Park belongs to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, and sadly for me, I am not either of them.

**Chapter 2**

Kenny McCormick was used to crazy, unexpected shit happening in his life. But usually that unexpectedness manifested itself in the form of him getting attacked by mutant turkeys or struck by lightning, not a kiss from someone he only considered a good friend. Plus, when it came to relationships, the only thing Kenny knew much about was the physical aspect. He just didn't _do_ all that emotional crap; he wasn't a pussy. That's why he was now enlisting the guidance of the biggest emotional pussy he knew: Stan Marsh.

"I need your help, Stan," he told the boy breathlessly as he slumped down in the chair next to him.

Stan blinked slowly, his eyes still bleary with tiredness. "Okay. What's up?" he asked, but before Kenny could launch into an account of what had just happened moments earlier, their Algebra 2 teacher Ms. Suksoncok (who was a lot like Mrs. Choksondik, but even uglier and scarier, if that was possible) commenced with a lecture about exponential and logarithmic functions, which Kenny understood maybe 5% of. He sometimes wondered why he even bothered coming to school when most things his teachers said went in through one ear and out the other. At least he had brought his grades up to a C+ average and even a few B-'s under the tutorship of Butters.

_Butters._

Kenny nervously chewed on the end of his pencil, momentarily forgetting about taking notes. Where the hell had that kiss come from? Sure, he liked Butters. A lot. And he knew that Butters liked him a lot too. In the last few years, they had found themselves sort of gravitating toward each other, like magnets. Stan and Kyle had their ultra-faggy Super Best Friends thing, and Cartman was an intolerant asshole that no one wanted to spend all their time with, so that left Butters and Kenny to forge their own friendship on the side.

But he had never really given much thought to the possibility that Butters might "like-like" him. Maybe it was because when he wasn't around Butters, he spent too much time chasing tail to really consider the opinions of people other than slutty chicks, or just the fact that he saw no reason why someone like Butters would ever find someone like him attractive. After all, he was just a dirt-poor, trailer trash pervert, while Butters was well-off, middle class and innocent. They were complete opposites. Then again, there was that old saying that "opposites attract", so Kenny supposed that maybe that wasn't such a load of BS after all.

However, that still left one problem: how did Butters even get up the courage to kiss him? He liked to think that he knew Butters pretty well. They didn't tell each other all their deepest and darkest secrets or anything like that, but they had spent enough time together to know each other's idiosyncrasies and some of the more complex facets of their personalities… and based on that previously acquired knowledge, Kenny was pretty sure that Butters wouldn't have kissed him unless he thought for sure that Kenny returned his feelings.

Kenny worried about that point. Had he unintentionally led Butters on? After all, Kenny _did_ have a tendency to be a shameless flirt, even when he wasn't consciously trying to be. Stan had once compared him to a dog that liked to hump the hell out of your leg, but you kept it around anyway because it's actually a good companion and can do some cool tricks. Kenny liked that analogy and referenced it so often that Kyle had even bought him a shirt that said "WILL HUMP LEG FOR $5" for him as a birthday gift.

Ms. Suksoncok was still rambling as usual, and at this point, no one was listening except for the goody two-shoes virgins in the front row. Damien was asleep in a desk a few rows to the left, and he was pretty sure Stan was taking a nap too until he heard him scribbling in a notebook. When he happened to glance over at the paper, he was expecting to see notes, but instead there was just one measly sentence written in the margin. He craned his neck to get a better look and Stan, noticing this, slyly edged it closer to him.

_Ugh, this is so boring. What did you want to tell me earlier?_

Kenny felt a grin slowly materializing on his face. Ah, passing notes, one of his favorite forms of communication. He wrote underneath it quickly and then slid it back to Stan.

_I agree. And Butters kissed me right before class started… so that was like, what, 5 million hours ago?_

Stan's reaction was priceless. His eyebrows shot right up into his hairline before furrowing in confusion, and his mouth parted slightly in a gape. He looked at the paper, then at Kenny, then back at the paper, and then his expression shifted into one of deep thought as he jotted down a reply and passed it back.

_What, like on the cheek? _He looked at Kenny for confirmation, and when Kenny shook his head no and pointed to his lips, Stan returned to writing. _Wow. That doesn't really seem like Butters to be so… forward, I guess?_

Kenny nodded in agreement to this and wrote back, _I know, that's what I thought. I figured that he wouldn't have kissed me unless he was sure that I liked him back. _He slid it over as inconspicuously as possible to Stan, whose reply was short, concise, yet loaded.

_Well, do you?_

For a minute, Kenny was angry at the obvious implications in this question. He wasn't sure why, but it had just kind of struck a nerve. It wasn't like he was offended or anything; he was just angry because… well, actually, he didn't know why it made him mad. It just did.

When he looked over at Stan, it was clear that his friend wasn't doing it to get a rise out of him. His expression was completely unassuming and genuinely curious. He wasn't like Cartman; he actually _wanted_ to hear his friends' problems and help them out.

But before Kenny could even begin to write a reply to that, his thought process was interrupted by the sound of Ms. Suksoncok's grating voice.

"You two! In the back of the room!"

Immediately, the heads of everyone in the back row (including Stan and Kenny) snapped up, their collective gaze fixated on the seething teacher at the front of the room.

"Oh Jesus!" Tweek cried, raking his hands through his spiky blond hair. "She's talking about us, Craig! Oh, God!"

Mrs. Suksoncok sighed in pure exasperation. "No, I don't give a damn about you two. Craig, go to the office immediately, I don't tolerate obscene gestures." Craig glared proverbial daggers at her as he stood up and stormed out of the room, still brandishing his middle finger defiantly.

"I was talking about you," she clarified, pointing directly at Stan and Kenny. "Stan and the boy who dies all the time."

"I _have_ a name," Kenny protested.

"What?" she parroted blankly, cupping one ear to hear better. "I can't hear a thing you're saying, boy. Your voice is too muffled."

Kenny groaned and said louder, "My name is Kenny!"

"You need a penny?"

"Oh, fuck it," Kenny exclaimed, throwing up his hands in the air to show that he had officially given up on this pointless exchange. That's when Stan decided to step in.

"His name is Kenny," he explained, looking almost as perturbed as the hooded boy sitting next to him.

Ms. Suksoncok just waved her gnarled hand dismissively. "I'm not here to learn your names, I'm here to teach you about math and make your lives a living hell."

"That's not very comforting," Stan replied with a frown. Kenny uttered a muffled agreement.

"Yes, well, neither is life, but I digress. Care to explain why you two were passing notes?" she accused, placing her hands on her hips. Kenny winced; they were _definitely _busted now.

Stan slid his gaze over to Kenny, then back to the teacher, attempting to be as calm as possible while coming up with a feasible explanation. "Um, we weren't actually 'passing notes'," he said, making air quotes with his fingers. "Ken didn't understand the lecture, so I was trying to help him." He patted Kenny's shoulder in a show of mock comfort, mouthing 'he's dumb!' to Mrs. Suksoncok. Kenny nodded enthusiastically and folded his hands together, trying to look as innocent and stupid as possible. It was one of the few advantages of being poor: he was _really _good at begging.

But because Mrs. Suksoncok was a cruel and unfeeling upper-class bitch, she didn't buy it. "Cut the crap, Marsh. I don't have time for this." She turned away and hobbled back to her desk to jot something down. "You and your little buddy have after-school detention," she announced without looking up. _Leave it to someone whose last name is Suksoncok to be a complete and total cocksucker, _Kenny thought bitterly, not that he was too surprised. Ever since Mr. Mackey broke up with her a few weeks ago, she'd been acting like a fat whore on the rag.

"Ooooh," the rest of the class chorused.

Stan mumbled a "goddammit" under his breath and buried his head in his hands, while Kenny just tilted his chair back and stared up at the ceiling. _Ah well, _he thought, always trying to look on the positive side, _it's not like this day can get any worse_.

Shortly after that, his chair fell backwards and he smacked his head on the floor.

* * *

Kyle wasn't really sure what to think of Butters Stotch.

Sure, they hung out in the same group of friends, and Kyle always stood up for him when Cartman's teasing got too out of hand, but they never spent any "one-on-one" time together outside of school. It's not that he didn't like Butters; it was more that they didn't have much in common, and their personalities just didn't really mesh well. Then again, maybe he was biased because he always had to compare every friendship with his and Stan's, and of course nothing could really even _begin_ to come close to that. But still, his feelings toward Butters mainly rotated between "God, that poor kid! We should help him!" and "Damn, he's gullible, I wonder what kind of weird shit we can make him do." It had pretty much been like that since 4th grade, and he didn't really see that changing any time soon.

However, Butters was the only one of his friends that matched him academically. Stan was generally a 'B' student, so he took a couple AP classes, but the only hours they had together were 2nd hour English and 5th hour Spanish 3. On the other end of the spectrum, he and Butters had 4 hours together, which meant that they usually sat near each other or worked together on assignments where a partner was required. (It should be noted that although Kyle and Cartman both had the same GPA and took all the same courses, they only had 1 class together because the teachers weren't _that _big of dumbasses)

Kyle was looking over last night's homework and absently spinning around in the rotating chair when Butters walked through the door to their AP Biology classroom.

"Heya, Kyle!" he greeted cheerfully as took the empty seat next to him.

"Oh, hi Butters," Kyle replied, not even bothering to look up from his paper. "Did you get the answer to number 7 on our worksheet?"

Butters seemed to ignore the halfhearted acknowledgement and instead dug through his backpack until he found the worksheet. "I'ah got mitochondria," he said.

Kyle rechecked the question and nodded slowly in comprehension as he wrote down the answer. "Yeah, I think you're right. Thanks, dude!"

When he glanced up again, Butters was smiling, though his blue eyes were strangely distant. After a moment, Butters seemed to realize he was spacing out because his eyes refocused and he answered with a smile, "No problem!" He then turned halfway in his seat and started talking to Jimmy Valmer.

Kyle just bit his lip and watched in puzzlement. Butters seemed happy today, yet oddly distracted too. He wondered if it had anything to do with Cartman's strange - well, stranger than usual - behavior earlier that morning. After all, his last words _were _"Oh, fuckshit, Butters!", so it was safe to say that something had happened between the two. It was also really beginning to look like Cartman was up to something, and if that was true, Kyle had a moral obligation to the world to stop it.

"Hey, Butters," Kyle said, lightly tugging on the other boy's turquoise jacket.

Butters politely excused himself from his conversation with Jimmy and turned back to Kyle, looking expectant. "Hmm?"

"Have you talked to Cartman today?"

"Of course! I talk to Eric every day! Not that I always like it," he stated simply, grinning.

"Well…" Kyle hedged, wondering if maybe he _was_ just being paranoid after all. "Did he say anything… weird to you? I mean, we all know he says crazy shit every day, but did he say anything that really struck you as out of the ordinary?"

Butters' eyes widened and the relaxed grin on his face slowly faded away. He averted his gaze and rubbed the back of his head nervously, his cheeks beginning to color. "Well, uh, he, um… he was helping me, actually. Tellin' me what this note meant a-an' givin' me some advice and stuff."

"Advice?" Kyle repeated. That didn't sound too good. Getting advice from Cartman was like going to a whore for a hug. "Look, Butters, I think taking whatever Cartman says to heart isn't really a good idea. He's a lying bastard, you know that."

"Oh, trust me, I know," Butters said with a vigorous nod as their teacher, Mr. Spooner, started taking attendance.

Kyle let that sink in for a minute when he suddenly remembered something Butters had mentioned earlier. "You said something about a note," he began, one eyebrow raised.

"A-ah, yeah, about that…" Butters trailed off and looked down, appearing to be silently debating with himself. Either that or he just looked like he was trying to burn holes in the desk for kicks. Kyle went with the first one.

Without saying anything, Butters opened up his binder and pulled out a slightly crumpled piece of paper, which he handed to Kyle.

"Eric says he knew that Kenny liked me for awhile," he elaborated as Kyle started to read. "I sure hope he's right about that one."

Kyle felt his eyebrows rise as he read the short note. Half of him wanted to laugh, because he was pretty sure that there was no way in hell that Kenny would ever write a love letter, but the other half of him didn't want to hurt Butters' feelings. Sure, maybe Kenny _did _have feelings for Butters- but if he did, Kyle was almost certain that he'd express them in a different way.

Butters must have had _some _inkling of a doubt that Kenny wrote this. The two of them weren't the best of friends or anything, but he thought that Butters knew Kenny at least as well as he did, and he didn't think Butters was gullible enough to believe that Kenny wrote this… was he? Kyle's answer to that was 'no'. Gullibility most likely played a role in it, but he was sure that Butters' desperateness and Cartman's manipulative ways were also a big part.

_Cartman_, Kyle mentally hissed. He was always trying to think up some crazy scheme to ruin their lives, and this time he had obviously set his sights on ruining the friendship between Butters and Kenny. Well, Kyle wasn't going to let that happen.

For right now, though, he wouldn't share this new conclusion with Butters.

"You really like him, don't you?" Kyle asked quietly.

Butters nodded with a besotted smile on his face. "Boy, do I."

Kyle resisted the urge to frown at that. He only hoped that this didn't end with Butters' heart breaking. Before he could think about it too much and revert to his worrywart tendencies, he felt his cell phone vibrate. _Ugh, who could be texting me in class? _he wondered a little peevishly. As with most other trends, Kyle didn't understand what the big deal was about cell phones and texting. To be honest, the only reason why he even had one to begin with was because his Mom gave him this long-ass rant about the lack of communication in their family. It wasn't his Mom who had just texted him though; it was Stan.

_Hey, I'm taking Ken to Hell's Pass. He just fell out of his chair during class and hit his head, but for some reason he didn't die. Weird huh?_ _I think he'll be ok though, just don't tell Butters yet. There's something going on between them, I'll explain it later. (oh, and sorry for texting you during class, I know you hate that!)_

Kyle couldn't help but grin at that last part, but the rest of the text puzzled him slightly. How did Stan know about the whole "Kenny and Butters" thing? Was he referring to the love letter or something else? He suppressed a groan and started massaging his temples; dealing with other people's drama really was _not_ his forte, if the rapidly worsening migraine pulsing in his head was any indication.

The rest of the hour passed by rather uneventfully - the only exception being when Kevin and Jason accidentally knocked over their test tubes, causing a hole 3 feet in diameter to be burnt through the black and white linoleum tiles on the ground. "Good thing we're on the first floor!" was Mr. Spooner's only remark on the subject, and they ignored it for the rest of the hour.

When the bell finally rang, Kyle gathered up his books and shot out of the classroom like a bullet. He had to confront Cartman and extract every detail he could out of him before passing time was up. Luckily for him, it wasn't too long before he found Cartman walking past shop class, looking quite carefree and pleased with himself.

"Hey! Fatass!" Kyle called.

Cartman turned around and grinned lazily as Kyle approached. "Jew," he spat. "What brings you to the burn-out section of the school? Shouldn't you be with the other dorks who get hard-ons for science?" A few of the aforementioned burnouts who were loitering in the hallway cast venomous glares at the arguing duo, but they ignored them.

"I'm here because of _you_, dickhead!"

"Really? I'm honored that you would go to such lengths just to see me, Kahl."

"Not. Like. That.," Kyle ground out, growing increasingly frustrated. "I'm here to talk to you about that fake note you wrote to Butters."

Cartman's face was momentarily seized with shock, then anger. "What? How did you figure that out already?"

"Because I don't fall for your shit as easily as Butters does." The Jew's green eyes narrowed to slits. "Why did you do it? Stan and I are used to you ripping on our friendship, but Kenny and Butters… they aren't. If you keep this up, you're seriously gonna hurt both of them."

"You think I don't know that?" Cartman sneered. "I hate those two assholes. I _want _them to be hurt."

For a few seconds, Kyle was stunned by Cartman's callousness. Sometimes he forgot that he was dealing with a seriously fucked-up sociopath who really didn't give a shit about other people's feelings, even if those people were supposed to be his friends. "God, you're unbelievable," he muttered and shook his head in disbelief. "I'm gonna tell Butters the truth about this."

He turned around to leave, but something about Cartman's next words made him stop in his tracks. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Kyle suppressed a shiver at the ominous warning. "Oh? Why the hell not?" he demanded, shooting a glance over his shoulder.

Cartman leaned against the wall casually and began to inspect his fingernails, looking thoroughly bored with the subject. "Between you and me, Kahl," he began slowly, "Butters is very mentally unstable."

Silence.

"Wait, _what_?" Kyle eventually sputtered. "You're hardly one to talk about being mentally unstable, Mr. 'I Like to Dress Up as Britney Spears and Make-Out With a Cardboard Justin Timberlake'. And Butters is just fine!"

"'Ey! That was one time!" Cartman hissed, looking around quickly to make sure no one had heard Kyle's accusation. Fortunately, everyone else in the hallway was too stoned off their asses to care anymore.

"Do I need to remind you of your 'Chili con Tenorman'?" Kyle asked, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting one eyebrow.

"That asshole had it coming to him," Cartman huffed. "Anyway, if you seriouslah don't believe me, maybe you'll believe Butters' therapist instead."

He lifted his hand dramatically and then… shoved it down the front of his pants.

"…what the _fuck_ are you doing?"

"Trying to find what I wanna show you, _duh_," Cartman stated with an infuriating eye roll as he continued to feel around in his pants.

"What, your penis?" Kyle asked, repulsed and yet strangely amused at the same time. "Because if you haven't been able to find that by now, I seriously worry for your love life."

Cartman used his free hand to flip Kyle off and fumbled around for a few more seconds until he finally found it. "Ah, here it is!" he exclaimed as he pulled out a manila folder, handing it over to Kyle.

The Jew wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Ew, I'm not touching that after it's been in your pants for God-knows-how-long."

Cartman scowled. "Fine, have it your way, you little pussy." He pulled it back and flipped through the contents until he found a blue piece of paper. "Hm, this one describes Butters' suicidal tendencies in detail," he observed, jouncing his eyebrows.

Kyle blinked. 'Suicidal tendencies'…? "Alright, gimme that," he barked. The redhead swiftly snatched the paper from the hands of Cartman, who just smirked and watched him with that knowing smile that pissed Kyle off to no end. Sure enough, there it was in neat cursive: a description of how the subject was suffering from major depressive disorder. At the top was the bold heading 'SOUTH PARK THERAPY CENTER', and directly below it was a signature.

"Oh…," he whispered, his stomach sinking like a stone.

"Yeah. As you can probably tell from reading that, Butters is in a very fragile state of mind. If he finds out that Kenny didn't really write the note… it would most likely push him over the edge." His voice was low and harsh, daring Kyle to challenge him. "_Now _do you understand why you can't tell Butters?"

Kyle glared at him weakly. The fact that he was in such a compromising position made him uncomfortable. He didn't like it when other people had control over him, especially if that person was Eric Cartman. It wasn't like he had much of a choice, though. "Yes," he said with a sigh of resignation. "But I don't like this one bit. Oh, and Cartman… if you try to do _anything _else to them, I'll personally send your ass on the next bus to Boulder."

Cartman gasped, looking as if he'd just been mortally wounded. "You wouldn't dare," he whispered with wide eyes.

"Yes, I would."

"Bu-but there's _hippies _there! Hippies EVERYWHERE!" he practically screeched, gesturing wildly. The way he reacted, you'd think he was about to be shipped off to a Vietnamese prison camp, not some liberal college town in Colorado.

Kyle grinned smugly. "Exactly." He was about to continue his anti-Cartman tirade when the sound of the warning bell echoed through the hallway. _Shit. _"Gotta go, fatass," Kyle announced, adjusting his backpack as he turned to leave.

"Fuck you, Kahl," were Cartman's good-natured parting words as he, too, turned around and went down the opposite end of the hallway.

Kyle just rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket, fishing around for his cell phone. He had to tell Stan and Kenny about this.


	4. In the Hospital

**A/N: **Hey guys, thanks again to everyone who read the last chapter. In the next one, I'll hopefully start easing in the Style and Candy subplots. Oh, and you also get to find out Cartman's REAL motives.

Loved the new episode too, by the way. It was a Cartman, Butters, and Kenny thing… much like this fic, haha. "Now our friend Kenny is tryna break the windshield! Ain't that gay as hell!"

**Disclaimer: **I'm not funny enough to own South Park.

**Chapter 3**

When Kenny opened his eyes again, he thought he was in Heaven.

He believed this for a couple of reasons: first, directly above him was a bright white light amongst the darkness, like the "light at the end of the tunnel" and second, there was a sort of tingly feeling shooting up and down his body, a sensation that he commonly experienced when ascending into Heaven. He couldn't remember what he'd done before his death, but it must've been pretty good if he was being sent to Heaven instead of Hell.

Some people associated Heaven with eternal happiness and deceased loved ones. Kenny, on the other hand, was a little more unorthodox. When someone said the word 'Heaven' he immediately thought of hot naked chicks with big hooters. There was definitely some twisted irony in that, but it actually wasn't just Kenny being a horndog - that was what Heaven was actually _like _for him. On multiple occasions he had tried explaining this to his friends, but they had just dismissed it and used it as further evidence of Kenny's perversion. Jerks.

He unconsciously reached out his hands and began groping blindly at the air. It had been a long time since he'd gone to Heaven, and he was hoping he could get some nice boob action.

His hands found something solid. It felt smooth, like skin, but not really squishy enough to be boobs. Confused and curious, he ran his thumb in a circular motion, moving slowly outward until it passed over what seemed like the bridge of a nose.

"…why the hell are you grabbing my face?"

At the sound of the voice, everything seemed to focus. One thing was for sure: Kenny _definitely _wasn't in heaven. He was in a small, sterile white room, more specifically a hospital room judging by the machines running next to him. Sitting next to his cot was Stan, who looked thoroughly perplexed but otherwise made no move to detach Kenny's hands from his face.

Kenny just blinked at him. His brain was too sluggish to come up with a decent response for that, so he just let his hands fall limply until they landed on Stan's very flat, very _not_ busty chest. "Why don't you have tits?" he wondered drowsily, frowning at this turn of events.

Stan raised an eyebrow in amusement. "Um, because I'm a guy?" he answered, chuckling. "Damn, how much meds did they give you?"

"How am I supposed to know, dude? Like… I don't even know why I'm here," he admitted, running a hand through his messy blonde hair. As his fingers grazed the back of his head, they brushed lightly over a large bump, making him wince in pain. "Ow! _Fuck_!" he hissed through clenched teeth.

"Be careful, dude, you just got a concussion," Stan informed him.

"Really?"

"Yeah. We were just sitting around in class when you fell out of your chair and hit your head. I'm kind of surprised you didn't die, actually."

"Me too," Kenny breathed, looking at his hands in amazement. He hardly ever got injured without dying. _God must be in a good mood today if he's letting me live_, he thought wryly. Momentary elation at his cheating of death filled him, and he pumped both fists in the air enthusiastically. "Woohoo!"

Stan nodded and leaned back in his chair, grinning to himself. "Suksoncok couldn't believe it either. After you hit your head, she was all 'Whatever, he's dead, now let him rot in peace so I can get back to teaching'," he said in a fairly good imitation of their Algebra 2 teacher. Kenny laughed appreciatively as Stan continued, "But I noticed that you were still breathing, so she told me to get the hell out of her class and take you to the hospital… which I did."

"Thanks, Stan," Kenny said, flashing his friend a genuine smile. He shifted slightly to get a little more comfortable in the highly unaccommodating hospital cot, and as he did, he caught sight of something just behind Stan: Butters.

The boy was sleeping in a small chair in the far corner of the room, his legs curled up into his chest and his head resting against his shoulder. Next to the chair was an orange backpack, so Kenny assumed he had come directly from school to the hospital. Kenny's heart beat in agitation as the events of what had happened at school that morning came flooding back to him.

Stan turned halfway in his seat, following Kenny's line of vision. "Oh. Yeah," he muttered, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "About that…"

"I don't want to talk to him right now," Kenny interrupted, shaking his head vigorously. "I told you earlier, Butters kissed me. And I did nothing. He's gonna want some answers to that, and, well, I don't think I can really give him any right now." The truth was that Kenny _did _have the answer - and the answer was no. But he had rejected a few girls before in his lifetime and all of them had either broken down and started sobbing hysterically or bashed his head in with a baseball bat, so Kenny wanted to avoid situations like that as much as possible.

"Well, you better come up with some soon," Stan replied cryptically.

Kenny narrowed his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The black-haired teen suddenly became engrossed in his coat sleeve. "Uh," he began hesitantly, picking at a loose thread, "Cartman wrote this note to Butters, but he made it look like you wrote it."

Kenny's stomach flopped in apprehension. If Cartman was involved in this, it couldn't be good. He fisted his hands in the white cotton blanket and cleared his throat, attempting to get rid of the lump that had lodged itself there. "What'd it say?" he asked, although he already had an inkling of an idea.

At this point, Stan's eyes were looking everywhere but at him, and it was getting a little annoying. _Just say it already! _Kenny screamed in his mind. "Don't flip your shit or anything, but it's basically a love letter from you to Butters, saying how you think he's cute and you want to date him or something like that." The sentence came out of Stan's mouth in a rush, and once the final words tumbled out, he clamped it shut and glanced at Kenny to see his reaction.

Predictably, Kenny's reaction was not a good one. He felt like he was about to indulge in a fit of self-righteous rage that would put Sheila Broflovski to shame. In fact, he probably would've, had it not been for the ridiculous amount of painkillers taking the edge of his rage.

"That… that _bastard,_" Kenny growled. "I mean, in a way, I'm not surprised, since he seems hellbent on making everyone around him miserable, but still… why'd he have to drag me and Butters into this?" With a frustrated sigh, he flopped back on his pillows, staring up at the ceiling so hard he almost believed he could make it collapse through sheer force of will. He dug the heels of his palms against his eyelids and groaned in consternation. "God, that's why Butters kissed me, isn't it? And now I'm gonna have to tell him the truth and look like a giant dick because I don't like him that way." For most of his life, Kenny thought that he didn't care what other people thought about him. That wasn't true. He gave a shit what Butters thought of him. He gave a _lot _of shits, actually. "I don't wanna hurt his feelings, Stan," he said honestly, uncovering his eyes and shooting the other boy a pleading look.

Stan gave a sympathetic frown and opened his mouth as if to speak, but before he could say anything the door swung open and Kyle strolled in.

"Hey," he greeted, ignoring the tense atmosphere and easing into the seat next to Stan, "sorry I'm late. What's up?"

"Kenny's having an emotional crisis," Stan informed.

"Ah." Kyle nodded. "So you told him about 'The Note'?" Stan bobbed his head in response and Kyle gave the parka-clad boy a pitying look. Kenny was used to getting that look from other people - people who only knew him as a poor, trashy manwhore - but when it came from his best friends, it was a little annoying. "How's your head?"

"Shit, dude," Kenny said in response, "that's like the _least _of my concerns right now." It was true. He could only faintly feel the pain in the back of his skull. Whether that should be attributed to the pain meds or the fact that he was too focused on this situation with Butters to really worry about anything else, he couldn't tell.

"You're gonna have to be Butters' boyfriend, you know," Kyle stated, and Kenny noticed that Stan was wincing, probably at the Jew's blunt delivery. Kenny actually kind of appreciated it; he didn't know how much more he could take of Stan pussyfooting around. On the other hand, what Kyle said was just about the last thing he wanted to hear. He had no idea why the hell he _had_ to be Butters' boyfriend, and the prospect honestly made him freak out a little.

"But why?" Kenny gave voice to his concerns, palms turned upward in a gesture of helplessness. "I mean, like I told Stan, I really don't want to hurt his feelings." He glanced over at Butters, still sleeping with a soft smile on his face, completely oblivious to the conversation happening right in front of him. "But at the same time… if I just pretend I like him and drag it out, he's gonna end up hurting a hell of a lot more than if I end it now."

Stan and Kyle exchanged a Look. Kenny recognized it as the same Look they used right before giving him that intervention back when he was a cheesing addict. Actually, the thought of huffing cat piss until he passed out and forgot about everything was starting to sound pretty appealing to him.

Since Kyle had chosen that moment to do his best impression of a mute person, Stan decided to take the reins. "Normally, I'd agree with you," he began, yawning and massaging the bags under his eyes again - God, he _really _needed to get some sleep - before continuing, "You shouldn't date someone unless your heart's in it. Otherwise, you're just being a douchebag by playing with the other person's feelings. But…" The words trailed off lamely and the dark-haired boy turned back to Kyle, beseeching him with his blue eyes.

The Jew bit back a sigh and hunched forward, a few skinny fingers lightly tugging at the flaps of his green ushanka. "Kenny, Butters is… well, he's mentally unstable."

Kenny was caught somewhere between disbelief and fury. "What?" he rasped, his eyebrows knitting together. "That's not funny, Kyle. Butters is fucking _fine_. Just because he's a little different from us doesn't mean jack shit."

"I know, I know, trust me," Kyle said quickly, waving his hands in defense, "I understand, I really do. It's just… Cartman found some of Butters' records at a therapy center. Apparently he's suffering from some pretty serious depression."

This time, when Kenny opened his mouth to express the feelings of shock coursing through him, no words would come out. His gaze slowly drifted over to the blonde boy still asleep in the chair, the boy who always seemed so damn happy he sometimes wondered if he shit rainbows, too. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't reconcile the image of his innocent and happy-go-lucky friend with this newfound information. It just didn't fit… or did it? After all, Butters had a home life to rival his own in shittiness, and it was safe to say that the Stotches were at least somewhat abusive, given their history of selling their son to Paris Hilton and attempting to drown him in a lake and all. Going through those kinds of things tended to mess you up a little.

Kenny twisted his fingers so tight through the drawstrings of his hood that he cut off the circulation to them. "That's not true," he muttered, still clinging to a small scrap of hope. "How do you know it wasn't just Cartman fucking around with our minds again? He forged the note."

"I wish it was," Kyle said mournfully. "But it looked pretty legit to me. There was even a signature from the therapist at the bottom."

Kenny felt his heart sink so low he was afraid it might fall out his ass. If Kyle the skeptic believed it, then there was a good chance it was true. _Butters never told me_, he thought to himself as the sharp edge of guilt sliced through him. He liked to think of himself as a trustworthy person, but evidently he was just a crappy friend if Butters was depressed and he hadn't even known it. In that moment, as he stared down at his purpling fingers, Kenny McCormick decided that he was going to do whatever it took to make Butters happy again, even if that meant being his boyfriend for awhile.

He was aware of Stan and Kyle looking concerned over his sudden silence, and just to put them out of their self-imposed worry-fit, he announced, "I need a goddamn smoke." Well, it was true, even though he hadn't really been thinking about it.

"This is a _hospital_!" they yelled in unison, then huffed out identical sighs of chagrin and pinched the bridge of their nose. Kenny couldn't help but giggle; their initial reaction was funny enough but, Jesus Christ, they were _so_ in sync sometimes it was a little creepy. He wondered if someday he and Butters would ever be that attuned to each other.

* * *

Butters had weird dreams.

He supposed that everyone had weird dreams once in awhile, but for him, they happened every time he fell asleep. Some of them he only remembered bits and pieces of when he woke up: certain colors and sounds and the feelings that were associated with them. Most of the time, though, he remembered them in vivid detail.

One of the more memorable dreams involved techno music, dancing cats, and Cartman dressed in a fluffy pink tutu. When he had told Kenny about this the day after it happened, Kenny just laughed and asked him if he'd been taking 'e' lately, to which Butters replied, "Gee, Kenny, I'm not so sure what a letter of the alphabet has to do with my dreams." Kenny had laughed again and explained that 'e' was a slang term for a drug called ecstasy, to which Butters replied by adamantly stating that he didn't do drugs. That was one of the things Butters loved about Kenny: he learned something new every day he spent with him.

This dream was unusual because it wasn't quite so random. It was somewhat of a replay of that day in 4th grade when he had gotten a ninja star lodged in his eye during a fight with Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman, except in the dream it was _Cartman _who threw the shuriken, not Kenny. Butters fell to the ground, trying and failing to stymie the flow of blood pouring from his eye as Cartman jeered and Stan and Kyle watched with a mix of fascination and horror. Slowly, Cartman's appearance began to change. Twin red horns popped out of his head and fire burst from his fingertips, the Earth even splitting beneath his feet. Butters whimpered and crouched lower to the ground as his one good eye sought out Kenny. If Cartman was the devil, then Kenny was an angel. Majestic wings sprouted from his orange parka and he suddenly flew forward, punching Cartman square in the face. The fat boy clutched his heart dramatically and, with a scream and a flourish, fell into the fiery pits of hell. As the hole in the Earth began to close up again, Kenny turned to face Butters, offering him a radiant smile and an outstretched hand. Butters scrambled to his feet and stumbled forward to take it, desire and longing buzzing through him until he thought he might just burst from happiness. Their fingers intertwined and they slowly rose up to heaven together, and just when Butters thought he could reach out and touch the clouds, he woke up.

_Hey, this isn't heaven, _Butters thought sullenly as his eyelids fluttered open and focused on a poster of the male reproductive system hanging on the wall next to him. Unless God had a secret interest in wieners, Butters was pretty sure he was in a hospital room, not the afterlife. He sat upright and stretched out his legs, giving his toes an experimental wiggle inside his Reeboks as he tried to remember how he had gotten here. He recalled Kyle coming up to him right before lunchtime and telling him that Kenny was hospitalized. Then Kyle left, leaving Butters to stand in the middle of the hallway, embroiled in an inner conflict so severe that the principal had to come up and ask him if there was a good reason why the contents of his lunchbox were littered all over the floor. Butters apologized profusely and picked up his sandwich and juicebox, then turned around and hid in the narrow musical education hallway. Even though Butters wasn't in either band or choir, he always went out of his way to walk through this wing of the school, partly because he liked hearing the pretty music and partly because the band geeks were just so darn nice to him.

He had spent the next 5 minutes curled into the fetal position outside the choir room, internally debating with himself whether he should skip the rest of the day to visit Kenny in the hospital or stay at school. If he went to see Kenny, his parents would definitely find out about it and he would be grounded so fast his head would spin. Normally, the threat of being grounded was enough to coerce him out of doing anything, but heck, if skipping school meant that he got to be there for Kenny in his time of need, Butters knew it would be worth the punishment. With a shaky resolve, Butters hopped on his bike and pedaled the 7 miles from South Park High to Hell's Pass (briefly stopping at Wall-Mart along the way), and being as it was that Butters had all the physical endurance of a 5 year old with muscular dystrophy, by the time he arrived at his destination he resembled a trembling, gelatinous mass. In fact, he was so tired that he had only said 10 words to Stan before sitting down and falling asleep for the next two hours.

Now when Butters looked around, he realized that things had changed since he'd fallen asleep. Kyle was in the room, doing his AP US History homework and chewing on the end of his pencil while Stan looked over his shoulder and made fun of the stuffy old people in the portraits. Kenny, meanwhile, was pushing around the peas and mashed potatoes on his lunch tray, glaring at the hospital food with obvious disapproval. Butters fought the sudden urge to kiss Kenny's lips, which were quirked into a pout that he found ridiculously adorable and endearing. Then again, he found just about everything Kenny did to be endearing.

Since they had yet to notice Butters' new state of consciousness, he announced his presence by coughing politely into the back of his hand. Immediately all conversation halted and three pairs of eyes landed on him.

"Hey, Butters," Stan greeted, giving him a two-fingered wave.

"Heya, Stan!" Butters smiled and nodded in acknowledgement of the Jew sitting next to him. "Heya, Kyle."

Kyle muttered out a greeting and then their collective gazes shifted toward Kenny like an ocular game of air hockey. By this time, the boy had stopped violently shoving peas into his mountain of mashed potatoes and was now staring at Butters like he'd grown a second head. Butters gulped and rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

After a few seconds, Kenny averted his intense gaze completely, instead opting to focus on the plain white sheets. "Hey, Butters." His shoulders rose and fell with a shaky breath and he looked up again, smiling when their blue eyes locked.

Butters wanted to run over and envelop Kenny in a bone-crushing bear hug, but ended up thinking better of it. After all, Kenny had just gotten hurt pretty badly, and Butters didn't want him to overexert himself or anything.

"Hiya, Kenny," Butters said softly as he stood up, smoothed out the wrinkles on his coat, and closed the distance between them. He stopped at Kenny's bedside and looked across at Stan and Kyle, not rude enough to ask them to leave but still kind of wishing that he and Kenny could have some alone time. _Gosh, I hope I'm not bein' selfish or nothin'_, he thought, chewing on his lower lip contemplatively as he wondered what to say next.

It was Kyle that got the message and ultimately put him out of his misery. "…We'll leave you two alone," he declared, abruptly lurching out of the red chair and tugging Stan out of the room with him, but not before shooting Kenny a meaningful look. Butters raised one curious eyebrow but otherwise said nothing. He'd probably just imagined it. The important thing now was that he was alone with Kenny, the boy he loved and who apparently returned his feelings, at least to some extent. The thought was enough to put a big grin on Butters' face as he covered Kenny's hand with his own.

"How's your head doin'?" Butters asked, using his free hand to push stray locks of messy blond hair from Kenny's forehead. For a few brief seconds, Kenny froze at the touch, but then he relaxed and flashed Butters a somewhat forced smile.

"Hurts like a bitch, but I can't really complain. At least I'm not dead." He shrugged nonchalantly.

"Boy, and I sure am glad you're not dead, Kenny," Butters gushed. He unconsciously began rubbing his thumb along Kenny's knuckles, the smooth pad glossing over numerous scars and bruises. "I-I was worried sick about you."

Kenny glanced down at the physical contact, his eyebrows first raising in mild surprise and then pinching together in confusion as he looked back up at him. "You really shouldn't worry about me, Butters. You know as much as anybody else in this town that if I die, I'll just come back again."

Butters flushed, suddenly feeling a little silly. "I'ah know, it's just… well, I never know how long you're gonna be gone, and I get real lonesome if I don't see you for a few days."

At this, Kenny fell silent, staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully. Butters felt panic rising in him; had he said something wrong? He was always so stupid, always saying the wrong things, always making Kenny sore at him… If his hand wasn't sitting comfortably atop Kenny's, he'd be mashing his knuckles together something fierce.

All anxiety dissipated when Kenny's fingers intertwined with his, giving them a light squeeze. "Thanks dude," he said, this time with a genuine smile on his face, a true 'Kenny smile'. "Next time I die, I'll make sure Satan lets me out early, just for you. 'Kay?"

Butters beamed. "Okay."

* * *

Today marked the third time Kenny got kicked out of the hospital.

The first time was because he'd been caught having sex in the On-Call room (his Grey's Anatomy-obsessed girlfriend's idea, not his, although he had to admit it _was _pretty hot). And although he'd literally been tossed out on his ass, it had been totally worth the bruises and loss of skin to satisfy the raging medical fetish he didn't even know he had.

The second time, Cartman had spiked his Dr. Pepper with some sort of drug that made him pass out for a few hours, and during that time Cartman ripped up his parka and squirted a gallon of cheesy fake blood on him so that the doctors thought Kenny was fatally injured when he was deposited on the front step of Hell's Pass at 5 AM. They freaked out and rushed him to the ER, fully prepared to perform surgery on him, but then they saw the note clutched in Kenny's hand that read 'Happy April Fool's Day, bitches!', and needless to say, they weren't amused. Kenny actually hadn't been that pissed off at Cartman for getting him in trouble; he just wished he could've seen the looks on their faces when they realized they'd just been punk'd.

The third time was simply because he had overstayed his welcome, or as the doctor so eloquently put it: "Kid, you only got a concussion, now stop mooching off our free food and get your ass back home!" Kenny hadn't bothered telling them that he sure as hell wasn't staying around because of the shitty food and instead silently left the hospital with an indignant Butters in tow.

"Those doctors sure are a-assholes, aren't they?" Butters remarked as he pushed his bike down the street.

Kenny, who was walking alongside him, laughed. He always found it funny when Butters swore. "Hell yeah they are. Those guys are constantly pissy at me, though. Probably because they're the ones who have to clean up my mess every time I die."

Butters deftly maneuvered the bike around a pothole. "That just seems a tad bit selfish ta me. It's their job ta help dying people, after all, and well, you're probably their best customer!"

"Best customer, huh?" Kenny mused, kicking an empty can into the gutter. "I like that." He glanced over at Butters to see the boy regarding him with a luminous blue-eyed stare and a soft smile, a smile that Kenny unconsciously returned, but otherwise said nothing. Kenny was glad that so far Butters had been giving him space and hadn't tried to kiss him again. Realistically, he knew it would have to come soon, but for now it almost felt like they were still just a pair of good friends.

But since the universe hated him, the façade of friendship was quickly broken just a minute after Kenny made this observation. "O-oh, hey, I almost forgot that I still have to give ya your gift!" Butters exclaimed, putting up the kickstand on his bike for a moment as he opened up his backpack and reached in.

"My gift?" Kenny parroted.

"Yeah!" Butters affirmed cheerfully. "I reckoned since we're boyfriends now and all, I should get ya something to make it special. Plus, you just got hurt, so I thought that calls for a present ta make you feel better." A thought seemed to seize him then. He stopped rummaging through his backpack to look up at Kenny, concern and worry evident on his face. "W-we _are _boyfriends now, right?" he asked timidly.

Kenny froze. This was his opportunity to put this to an end, to tell Butters the truth, that this was all just a big misunderstanding. Here was his way out. All he had to do was say…

"Yeah, of course we are." As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Kenny regretted them. He bit his lip to stop himself from saying anything else stupid and looked around for an object to bash his head against. Maybe then he could die and by Satan's mercy (hah, right) never come back again.

The words seemed to have the opposite effect on Butters, who looked relieved and ecstatic. His posture relaxed visibly and a bright grin lit up his features as he returned to scouring his backpack. "That just makes me so happy, ya wouldn't even believe it," he declared, then hummed in satisfaction when he found whatever it was he'd been looking for. "Alrighty, now close your eyes and hold out your hands. It's a surprise, so no peeking, mister!"

Kenny grinned in spite of himself at Butters' authoritative finger-wagging - which was actually pretty damn cute - and closed his eyes firmly shut. As he held his arms out in front of him, palms facing upward, he thought about the possible gifts that Butters could've gotten him. The fantastical part of his brain hoped it was some sort of dirty gift basket filled with sex toys.

A few seconds later, he felt something soft and furry being set atop his open hands, so that pretty much ruled out the kinky gift basket idea.

"You can open your eyes now, Ken."

His eyes opened at the command and landed on the object in his hands: a stuffed white teddy bear with a heart clutched between its oversized paws, the words 'GET WELL SOON' stitched onto the red silken fabric. He ran his finger along the muzzle, tracing the curve of its smile and trying and failing to think of something to say that would adequately express his gratitude.

When he glanced at Butters again, the blonde's gaze was averted meekly and he was scuffing his foot against the asphalt. "I'ah know it's kinda silly," he murmured, "b-but I just wanted you ta have somethin' to remember me by."

Kenny continued to silently move his mouth, choking on his words and feeling like a complete and total artard, which Butters misconstrued.

"Aw heck, I knew you wouldn't like it," he sighed, shoulders sagging in defeat. "I'm always messin' up when it comes to stuff like this."

"No!" Kenny protested quickly, shocking both Butters and himself with its vehemence. He shook his head and walked forward, placing a reassuring hand on Butters' shoulder as he explained, "I like it a lot, I really do. It's pretty fuckin' adorable. I just… didn't know what to say, that's all. So thanks." He found himself grinning stupidly for no real reason, and pretty soon, the corners of Butters mouth were turned upward in an infectious smile as well.

"You're welcome, Kenny! I'm just glad you liked it."

Kenny smiled and, figuring that this was as good a time as any to show affection, slipped one arm around Butters' waist to pull him flush against his side. It wasn't necessarily romantic, but it was physical contact nonetheless, and part of being boyfriends kinda meant you were supposed to touch each other.

Butters reciprocated blithely, resting his head against Kenny's chest and wrapping his arms around his midsection. In the cold December air, the shared body heat was enough to warm Kenny right to the core, and he figured that having a boyfriend might not be so bad after all if it meant that he got to do things like this.

"I guess this means I should probably get you something nice too, huh?" he wondered aloud, resting his chin atop Butters' mop of blond hair and noting that it smelled like strawberries.

Butters closed his eyes and smiled into his parka. "N-nah, that's okay, I already got what I wanted today."

Kenny just smiled sadly and ran his hand up and down Butters' side one more time before gently pulling away. "C'mon, let's get you home."


	5. Nice Guys

**A/N: **This is probably the last time I'm gonna be updating so quickly for awhile. Between homework from my AP classes and trying to get my driver's license, I've been busier than a one-legged Riverdancer, so expect new chapters to come at a slower rate.

As for this chapter: There's a disturbing lack of Jimmy in South Park fanfics. I love that kid, so I just HAD to include him!

Once again, thanks to everyone who took the time to review the last chapter. I really appreciate it.

**Disclaimer: **The insanely adorable and hilarious characters of South Park belong to Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

**Chapter 4**

Cartman fucking hated gym class more than anything else in the world.

Well, no. That actually wasn't true. He hated hippies most of all, then Jews and gingers, and somewhere after that came gym class. But still, it was in his top ten on a long list of things he hated with a fiery passion, and he would currently rather watch Family Guy for 10 hours straight than have to waste one more minute of his life running laps around the gym.

He despised gym class because he wasn't good at it. As far as he was concerned, why invest a significant amount of time and energy into something you really had no talent or passion for? Of course, he never told anyone this, and by the way he bragged about his sporting abilities to strangers and freshmen, you'd think he was the second coming of Michael Jordan. Or Jesus. Or some weirdly epic combination of the two.

On top of that, he was stuck with the absolute lamest group of people ever congregated in the town of South Park, and _that _was saying something. To name just a few, there was Scott Malkinson (who spent all his time being diabetic), Kyle Schwartz (who spent all his time being a Jew), and the Goth Kids (who spent half their time pissing and moaning about how gym class was "so conformist" and the other half sneaking outside to smoke and listen to Joy Division). The icing on the shit-cake, however, was that their teacher was none other than _Mr. Slave_. Yes, the same depraved homosexual who had once shoved a gerbil up his ass was now teaching a class that required boys to wear tight shorts that showed off every movement of their junk. To say that Cartman was scared shitless at this is an understatement.

The breath came out of his lungs now in quick, ragged gasps as he trailed behind Jimmy and- Jesus Christ, how was goddamn Jimmy Valmer running faster than him? Since there was no way in hell that he'd let a cripple beat him, Cartman pumped his flabby legs harder until he was running alongside his newly-declared rival.

"Oh, h-hey there, E-Eric," Jimmy greeted good-naturedly as he hobbled along on his crutches. "You seem to be running puh-puh-pretty slow today."

Cartman snorted. "No way, man. I'm creaming _you, _aren't I?" he remarked snootily, trying to sound confident and self-assured without having an asthma attack.

"If by c-creaming me, you mean juh-jogging next to me, then s-sure."

Cartman glared at him venomously, but since Jimmy was too busy looking resolutely ahead to notice the vicious scowl on his face, it had little effect. He was about to vocally demand Jimmy's attention when someone grabbed his shoulders from behind and rammed their bony knee into his ass, making him crumple to the ground.

"OW! Mother_fucker_!" he howled, clutching his back and rolling over to get a good look at just who had the balls to engage Eric Cartman in a physical confrontation.

Standing over him and blocking out the fluorescent ceiling light was none other than Kenny McCormick. Having discarded his trademark orange parka in favor of a plain white t-shirt and green basketball shorts, the shit-eating grin on his face was annoyingly obvious without the hood to partially obscure it. Eric frowned and looked past Kenny's legs to see Butters watching and laughing at them from under the basketball hoop on the other side of the gym. They locked eyes and he contorted his broad face into a menacing snarl, which shut Butters up immediately.

"I'm actually one of the few people in this town who hasn't fucked your mother yet, so your insult is kinda ineffective," Kenny snickered and, anticipating Cartman's reaction, darted nimbly out of the way before his feet could be swept out from under him. Cartman huffed at this and looked across the room to see if Mr. Slave was going to do anything about the fact that two of his students were just one more mother-related insult from a fist fight, but he was too busy watching some boy doing pull-ups and offering lisped encouragements. Predictable.

With some difficulty, he pushed himself to his feet, still clutching his wounded bottom. "Thank God you haven't. You'd probably give her herpes or knock her up with some mutant trailer trash baby, in which case I'd have to chop off your own dick and shove it down your throat." He paused and made a disgusted face. "Wait, never mind, you'd probably _like _that, you goddamn fag."

Kenny, who by this point in his life was completely immune to any and all insults Cartman threw at him, just rolled his eyes. "Only _half _a fag," he corrected, raising his chin.

Cartman snorted. "So you're a switch hitter, like I give a rat's ass." Although he was now somewhat accustomed to his friend's bisexuality, when Kenny first came out, he'd been horrified. A long string of events ensued in which Cartman tried (and failed) to coerce Kenny away from "the Dark Side" by showing him hardcore lesbian porn and pictures of STD-infected penises, and although Kenny thoroughly enjoyed the porn - "_I_ _still like tits_, okay?" - he remained staunchly bisexual. In truth, Cartman actually wouldn't have been that bothered by Kenny being a bisexual manwhore had it not been for Stan and Kyle constantly fagging it up. He was afraid that their gayness (vehemently denied by them, but still oh so obvious) was rubbing off on Kenny, and if Kenny "the horniest bastard that ever lived" McCormick could fall victim to it, then so could he. But then Cartman used the power of Google to verify that hanging out with gays and bisexuals did _not_ in fact give you an incurable desire to suck dick, and he'd been sleeping soundly ever since.

He jerked a thumb in Butters' direction. "Shouldn't you be making sweet gay love to your boyfriend in the locker room instead of giving me Flaming Rhinos?"

Kenny turned and, upon seeing who Cartman was talking about, waved and grinned. Butters eagerly returned the wave and Kenny looked back at Cartman again. "We can do _that_ later. Revenge on you is just a little more important right now." His blue eyes narrowed to slits. "Why'd you do it?"

Cartman, who knew exactly what Kenny was talking about, arched one brow. "What, you mean you don't know? I thought for sure you would've figured it out by now. For shame, Kenneth, for shame."

"No, I really have no explanation for why you're such a jackass."

"Well, I do," Cartman declared. He sidestepped to allow the idiots who were still running laps to pass him and then leaned against the wall, adopting his best storyteller voice. "The initial motivation was just to prank Butters. I was sleeping over at his house last Saturday, and I was gonna do something funny to him in his sleep, like tie his mattress to the roof of his house or something like that. 'Cause that's effing hilarious, am I right?" He laughed at his own cleverness and continued before Kenny could burst his bubble. "But then I started looking through his shit, and I found - wait for it - _Butters' diary_. And there was, like, this whole page where he just gushed about you and how you're so fuckin' amazing and how much he loves you and I swear I got diabetes just from reading it."

Kenny's eyes momentarily lit up and he glanced back at Butters again with a soft smile on his face. But then, for some reason unknown to Cartman, his expression became more downcast. "Is that all?" he asked, arching one brow expectantly.

Cartman paused to consider this. "Mostly I just wanted to mess around with Butters, yeah. But it's actually pretty convenient because I was able to get back at you, too. Remember how I won that totally sweet trip to Germany last summer, and I had you hold onto the ticket for a couple hours because the German teacher ended up being a crab-person who chased me all over the fucking town?"

"Uh-huh, I remember."

"So you must also remember how I trusted you with the ticket to my dream and you FUCKIN' LOST IT. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. Poor people are _always _losing things: their house, their job, their virginity... It's in your blood, man, and it sickens me."

Kenny's jaw dropped. "WHAT? I was _mugged_, okay? That's not my fault!" His nostrils flared and he jabbed Cartman in the stomach, which kind of pissed him off. What was he, the goddamn Pillsbury dough boy?

Cartman batted the offending finger away. "It was _totally _your fault! You just stood there and let them take my ticket like a little pussy!"

"How do you know? You weren't even there when it happened, dumbfuck!" Kenny yelled back, waving his hands emphatically. "And for your information, I didn't 'just stand there and let them take your ticket', alright? I tried to tell them to piss off, but one of the guys shanked me with a rusty crowbar. I died from a staph infectionbecause of that, so thanks a lot, asshole_._" He crossed his arms over his thin chest and glared at Cartman, who had to rub his eyes because for a second there, he could've sworn that Kenny had turned into Kyle. It was probably the PMS-y attitude.

"That doesn't change anything," he plowed on, not even bothering to be sympathetic towards Kenny's death because he'd stopped caring about them years ago. "You're still alive, Butters is still the faggiest fag that ever fagged, and I'm still in this shithole of a town instead of where I belong… _Deutschland_." He arched his arms over his head to demonstrate the sheer epicness that would've been his trip to Germany, which he knew for a fact would've been completely amazing because he had forced Butters to secretly join the trip and record everything on a crappy Camcorder for him.

Kenny continued to glare at him and Cartman could see his fingers curling into fists, but after a moment, he relaxed them and let his hands fall limply to his sides. "You know what, Cartman? I'm _sorry _you can't go to Germany, and even though it isn't my fault, I would've been fine with you just putting the blame on me because, hell, I'm a good scapegoat. But Butters?" He shook his head. "He doesn't deserve to get his heart fucked with. Even an inconsiderate douchebag like you _must_ see that."

Cartman's gaze slid over to Butters, who was now sitting up against the wall and sharing a water bottle with Token. The blonde was still watching them and seemed too absorbed in his concern for Kenny to pay attention to his chatty friend. Cartman's nose wrinkled with distaste; Token was probably talking about what base he'd gotten to with Wendy last night. The thought was enough to make him feeling like puking up a lung, so he forced himself to look back at Kenny.

"Jesus, get the sand out of your vagina. Butters is a big boy now."

"Exactly! So start treating him like one! We aren't 9 years old anymore, Cartman. Jerking Butters around might've been funny back in 4th grade, but now it's just pathetic." The anger that had been flaring in Kenny's eyes just moments earlier had died down to softly smoldering embers of pity.

Cartman gritted his teeth. He hated that about Kenny; hated that he could see right through him better than anyone else, hated that he knew of every little insecurity lurking beneath his tough exterior, but most of all, he hated that Kenny had the balls to feel sorry for him.

It was a rare thing for Cartman to not have anything to say, but at the moment, his mouth was void of words and his mind empty of any quick-witted gibes. It reminded him of the time his computer inexplicably wouldn't open any of his files so he chucked it out of the bedroom window in a fit of frustrated rage. (of course, the computer had been possessed, so it ended up crawling back into the house and trying to kill him later that night, but that was a long story)

So Cartman did what one does when they've run out of words in an argument: bitchslap the person they're arguing with right across the face.

The sound of the slap reverberated around the gym and all heads simultaneously turned toward them. For a moment, Kenny just stood there, looking stunned as he lightly touched his reddening cheek. Cartman regretted it almost instantly. He barely had time to say "Oh, donkey balls" before Kenny had him pinned to the ground and started socking him repeatedly in the jaw.

"Jesuth Chrith!" Mr. Slave shrieked as he rushed forward. Butters also chose that moment to materialize on the scene, wrapping his arms around Kenny's waist from behind and attempting to pull him away from the fight. Cartman would've laughed at Butters' miserably failing endeavors had Kenny's fist not been crammed into his mouth.

"Let me at 'im, Butters!" Kenny growled, still trying to swipe at Cartman. "I'm gonna make this fucktard pay!"

Butters squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his grip resolutely. "N-nah, Kenny, I can't let you do that to Eric."

Kenny relaxed a little bit and after a mild struggle, Butters and Mr. Slave finally succeeded in prying him away. Cartman rolled into a sitting position and tried not to choke on the blood in his mouth as he eyed Kenny warily. He looked fucking nuts. His eyes were wild and his breath was coming out in quick, harsh pants, and the only thing holding him back was Butters, which wasn't much considering Butters had arms that resembled wet spaghetti noodles more than muscle.

"There there, Ken," Butters whispered, running his fingers up and down Kenny's wrists. It seemed to calm him down because seconds later, Kenny's whole posture relaxed and he looked less like a rabid dog and more like a mildly pissed off Kyle… Which was still pretty scary, but it was enough to let Cartman breathe easy for the time being.

"What just happened here?" Mr. Slave demanded, placing his hands on his hips as he glared between Cartman and Kenny.

Kenny was the first to respond. "Cartman slapped me."

"'Ey! Don't put all the blame on me, you bastard! You're the one who went all apeshit."

Kenny looked like he was about to lunge again but Mr. Slave came between them before Cartman's balls could be ripped off.

"_Stop_," he commanded. "It doesn't matter who started it. It takes two to tango, boys. You're both at fault for this, and I want both of you to make up and be super friends again."

There was much grumbling all around but Mr. Slave was giving them that disapproving adult look and since Cartman was honestly afraid he might get assraped if he didn't do what he was told, he proffered his right hand to Kenny.

Kenny frowned but took the hand and shook it anyway.

"I still hate Kahl more than you," Cartman said. It was the closest he could come to atoning without spontaneously sprouting a vagina, and he knew Kenny was one of the few people in the world who could actually recognize that as a legit apology.

Even though Kenny was obviously still pretty angry, the corners of his mouth twitched in the faint beginnings of a smile. "Yeah, I know you do." That was one difference between Kenny and Kyle: Kyle was always perpetually pissed off at him like a fat bitch on the rag, but deep down him and Kenny were good friends.

They released each other's hands and Mr. Slave clapped in satisfaction. "Good! I'm glad we got this little mess all fixed up." He wrinkled his nose disdainfully as he gave Cartman a quick once-over. "Eric, go get a drink. You have blood all over your teeth and it looks like you tried to put on whorish lipstick in the dark."

Cartman snorted, bit back a "Been there, done that", and sauntered over to the drinking fountain. He was aware of the not-so-discreet glances and hushed whispers being cast his way, but he couldn't really find it in himself to give a crap. All he cared about right now was washing the disgusting metallic taste out of his mouth. He sucked in greedy mouthfuls of the water, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and turned away once he was done. Mr. Slave was trying to act like his students _weren't_ the type of people who were drawn like flies to shit when it came to gossip by distracting them with a game of basketball. Meanwhile, Butters was pressing a cold water bottle against the side of Kenny's face. Cartman grinned. Butters was gonna drive Kenny _crazy_, and not in the sexy way that songwriters always referred to, either. Hopefully.

His gaze roamed disinterestedly across the room until he found Wendy talking to Bebe… well, more like Wendy pretending to listen while Bebe talked her ear off. She looked good in those shorts and a tank top, he observed, and if the way the other guys were checking her out was any indication, he wasn't the only one who noticed. Unfortunately, his nice view of Wendy's ass was rudely interrupted when Token stopped showing off on the court long enough to jog over to Wendy and pull her into a passionate kiss. Cartman had to grip the edge of the stainless steel drinking fountain to stop himself from punching random passersby in the face.

He watched as Wendy lightly pushed Token away and launched into a rant, probably about how fervent public displays of affection were demeaning to her womanhood or something like that. For once, he was glad that she was so ridiculously prudish and feminist: two large parts of her personality that usually annoyed the ever-living shit out of him.

"Wow, you're really f-f-fucked up, did you know that?"

Cartman hid his shock at the boy's sudden appearance with a glare. "Shut up, Jimmy."

Jimmy didn't bother answering so Cartman's gaze meandered again. Now the black asshole was gone and Wendy was arguing with Bebe about something. Bebe placed both her hands on Wendy's shoulders, gave her a vigorous shake, and turned Wendy's face toward Cartman. Their eyes locked and Cartman shot her his best devilish grin, trying to strike a balance between 'Badass' and 'I Don't Give a Shit' and ending up with something more like 'I Just Ate a Whole Pack of Extreme Sour Warheads'. Wendy blinked and looked back at Bebe, who seemed smug, like she'd just proven a point.

"Y-you're wasting your time."

Cartman furrowed his eyebrows. "What?"

"W-Wendy. She likes n-n-_nice_ guys. That-that's why she broke up with you in 8th grade. And even if you were nice - which you deh-definitely aren't - she has a b-boyfriend, so it would still be pointless… if you don't mind me saying, o-of course."

Cartman scowled and continued to furrow his eyebrows until he could see tiny brown hairs at the top of his vision. Any mentions of his past 3-month relationship with Wendy, and _especially _any comments about how _he _was the one to get dumped, were guaranteed to piss him off. That's why most people avoided the subject like a flesh-eating disease, but that apparently did little to deter Jimmy Valmer. "Whatever. Like I care about _that _bitch," he scoffed.

Jimmy just smiled knowingly.

* * *

Butters didn't know how it was possible, but Kenny was _still _gorgeous even with a lump the size of a baseball on the back of his head and a bright red mark on his cheek.

He mused about this silently as he continued pressing a cold water bottle to the injured left side of Kenny's face, which was currently sporting a thoughtful frown. It was safe to say he was more than a little biased when it came to Kenny, having harbored a crush on him since 7th grade and all, but he knew for a fact that he wasn't the only one who felt that way. Part of being one of Kenny's closest and oldest friends meant that Butters had listened to Kenny occasionally bragging about his sexual conquests, and all those people must've thought Kenny was attractive if they had slept with him. Either that, or Kenny wasn't actually _that _good-looking but made up for it by being really great at sex, but Butters was in a public place and that wasn't a very good train of thought to follow, especially with the kind of shorts he was wearing.

Time to change the subject. "Gee, you haven't had much luck lately, huh, Ken?" he observed, laughing a little. "First ya go ahead an' conk your head on the floor, then you get in a tussle with Eric…"

The distant look left Kenny's eyes and he angled his head slightly to fix Butters with a blank stare, as if he'd been so lost in his own thoughts that he'd completely forgotten he was next to him. A grin slowly crept its way onto his face and he chuckled drily. "Yeah. We're both just kinda unlucky people, though."

Butters nodded slowly in agreement. That was true. He may have been born into a pretty well-off family, but that didn't mean his life had been all sunshine and unicorns (well, there _had _been that one time where he'd drawn a picture of a unicorn that shot rays of sun from its eyes and it came to life and lived in a makeshift stable in his basement for a couple weeks, but for the most part, there was a decided lack of both sunshine and unicorns in his life). But as rough as his childhood was, he couldn't really complain. He was alive and healthy and had friends who, for the most part, were pretty swell, and that was all he could really ask for, right?

He chewed on his lip and scooted a little closer to Kenny on the bench. "I'ah think we're pretty lucky to have each other, though."

Kenny winced slightly and Butters worried that he was somehow hurting him - was the water bottle too cold? Was he pressing too hard? - but a moment later Kenny was reaching for his hand. "You're right," he agreed with a smile, lacing their fingers together.

Butters looked down at their intertwined fingers, smiled, and removed the water bottle from Kenny's face to check how it was healing. The redness had almost completely disappeared, leaving just a vaguely round light pink mark in its wake.

"Lookin' better," he declared cheerfully. "How d'ya feel?"

"Pissed off," Kenny grumbled, then amended, "Oh, you were probably asking about my cheek, right? It feels much better now, thanks." He gave Butters' hand a light squeeze and went back to sullenly glaring at Cartman, who was trying to trip Token as discreetly as possible (which was actually pretty dang obvious, in Butters' opinion).

Butters frowned, following his line of sight. "What's got you so steamed at Eric?"

Kenny rested his chin in the hand that wasn't holding Butters' and heaved a sigh, rustling some of the messy blonde bangs that were obstructing his vision. "Cartman said some things," he began vaguely. "Mostly just talking shit about you and me."

"A-ah, I see." Butters' frown deepened. He'd had plenty of time to fantasize about what it would be like when him and Kenny became a couple, so he'd already come to terms with the fact that Eric would give them a heck of a lot of trouble for it.

Kenny looked at him questioningly. "You're not upset?" he asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

Butters shook his head. "Naw, not really. I think it's silly ta care 'bout what Eric says or thinks. Half the time, he probably doesn't even mean it, an' even if he does…" He shrugged. "Well, that ain't our problem. The way I see it, a relationship is somethin' special an' private between two people, and if they're happy bein' together, everyone else's opinion doesn't really matter a whole lot."

An admiring grin spread slowly across Kenny's face. "God, you're so smart," he said, and the awe in his voice made Butters blush.

"Thanks, Ken. I-I don't really get compliments that often."

"Well, you should, 'cause it's true," Kenny stated with such conviction that Butters almost believed him. "Seriously dude, I wish I was even half as goddamn smart as you. I'm just a dumbass." There was no trace of sadness in his voice, just acceptance, and for some reason Butters found that even more disheartening.

"Aw, don't say that!" he implored. "You ain't any dumber than the rest of the kids here, and in fact, I think you're way smarter than a whole lotta them, even if you don't always get the best grades." Kenny was looking at him with a raised eyebrow but still appeared to be unconvinced, so Butters wracked his mind for some examples of his boyfriend's intelligence.

"Like that one time we were sittin' in class an' I got my first…. ah… boner," was, naturally, the first thing that came to Butters' mind.

A grin of recognition spread across Kenny's face. "Haha, yeah dude, I remember that!" he laughed, his blue eyes glazing over with fond remembrance. "Mr. Mackey was giving us one of his lame-ass Sex Ed. Lectures and you leaned over, tapped me on the shoulder, and said 'Hey Kenny, I think somethin' weird's happening to my wiener'." He tilted his head back and laughed at the memory, and Butters couldn't help but join him. It was more funny than embarrassing, anyway.

Once they finally reined in their mirth, Butters looked at Kenny and said, "See? I knew next ta nothin' about that stuff, but you did! You _are _smart about some things!"

"Okay, yeah, so I know a lot about sex," Kenny conceded. "Not that that really counts for much." He chose that moment to temporarily release his grip on Butters' hand and lift both arms above his head in a languid stretch, making the hem of his shirt hike up to reveal the waistband of his flannel boxers and several inches of peachy skin. Butters knew that staring was impolite but at the moment, he just couldn't help it. He wanted to see more of Kenny's skin, and even more, he wanted to touch it. Butters involuntarily squeezed his eyes shut tight, his fingers twitching with the suppressed urge to fidget. He was a bad, bad boy.

Kenny seemed to know this too because when Butters opened his eyes again after thinking adamantly about dead kittens for a few seconds, he was watching him with a clearly amused and knowing look on his face. "Geez, Butters, keep it in your pants," he teased, dragging a hand seductively down the front of his chest until it paused at the line between his shirt and his shorts.

Butters stammered unintelligibly until he was interrupted by Kenny lightly clamping one hand over his mouth.

"Chill, Butters," he commanded with a breezy laugh. "I think it's funny, actually, and flattering."

"Really?" Butters asked, unable to hide the eagerness in his muffled voice. The idea that he didn't have to hide his attraction for Kenny anymore was still pretty novel, and he had found himself over the course of the last two days having to continually remind himself that he and Kenny were boyfriends now. Not just friends, but _boyfriends_. And that meant that he could be as openly affectionate with Kenny as he wanted. If Butters wasn't in public at that moment, he probably would've squealed. He settled with gently removing Kenny's hand and planting a soft kiss on the palm, a gesture that he'd seen in enough fairytales to know that he was probably being very, very gay right now, but he didn't care.

When he flicked his gaze back up to Kenny, the fellow blond was watching him with a slight curve to his lips that matched his own. "Well, yeah. I mean we're… uh… boyfriends now, right?" Kenny's smile faltered briefly, but was regained so quickly that Butters wondered if he was just imagining things again. Butters nodded in affirmation, urging Kenny to continue. "So it's just natural you would feel that way. We humans are very sexual beings, after all, and even _you're _not completely immune to the wonders of the dick."

"Well, I s'pose that's true," Butters admitted. He allowed his gaze to roam appreciatively up and down the length of Kenny's lean body, from his messy mop of sandy blond hair down to his dirt-covered white tennis shoes and back again. "But… are ya sure you don't mind?"

Kenny averted his gaze, chewing on the inside of his mouth contemplatively. After a moment of what seemed to be very intense thought, he turned to Butters again. "Of course I don't mind," he said, holding up their clasped hands as evidence. "Boyfriends, _duh_."

Butters grinned. "Yeah, boyfriends!" he echoed. Boy, did he love that word. He wasn't sure what his favorite word had been before, but 'boyfriend' was definitely his new favorite as of today.

They both slipped into a comfortable silence and disinterestedly watched Cartman trying and failing to one-up Token at basketball. Butters' thoughts drifted back to the subject of boyfriends again around the time Cartman dramatically threw the basketball to the floor, yelled his all-too-familiar catchphrase of "Screw you gahs, I'm going home!", and stormed out of the gym to the complete and utter surprise of no one.

Butters didn't know too much about relationships, having only been in one once or twice, but he knew that when you were dating, you were supposed to do a lot of stuff together with your boyfriend (or girlfriend). Based on this knowledge, it sounded to him like dating was just friendship but with more kissy and lovey-dovey stuff. That meant that him and Kenny could do all the fun stuff they normally did together when they were just friends, but with the additional bonus of more physical affection, which Butters loved. The thought made him wriggle in his seat happily. He could already tell that dating Kenny was gonna be the best thing that ever happened to him.


	6. The Tip of the Iceberg

**A/N: **Hey guys, sorry for how it took me longer than usual to update. *Tony Hayward voice* Sorry. Haha. Um, this chapter is really long, but most of them won't be like this. Yes, I'm working in the subplots, partly because I love the other characters too much to just write about Kenny and Butters, and partly because I've been rotating POVs since the start of the story, and I wanted to have some continuity.

The Style subplot is mostly for shits and giggles. If you don't like Style, don't worry; most of their plot is just wacky best friends shenanigans with some gay subtext on the side. It's… kind of weird, but it's inspired by the "Follow That Egg!" episode and my fascination with the idea of Stan and Kyle as parents (especially Kyle as a naggy, bitchy, jealous wife, ahaha). You'll have to read ahead to see what I'm talking about, and before you ask: no, their subplot won't always take up half a chapter. ;P

But fear not: The main focus of this story IS Kenny/Butters. Enjoy the fluff while it lasts, everyone. Once again, thank you so much for the reviews, and I'm glad to hear that this story is bringing some much needed love to this underrated pairing.

(P.S. In light of "Coon 2: Hindsight", I demand Mysterion/Professor Chaos ficcage. It must be done.)

**Chapter 5**

School was unbearable without Kyle.

Stan came to this conclusion at 11:56 AM, which happened to be toward the end of his lunch hour. He was sitting at their gang's usual table in the far right corner of the cafeteria, him and Cartman on one side and Kenny and Butters on the other, innocently munching on some Bosco sticks - or at least _trying _to be innocent, since Kenny was quick to point out that the stuffed breadsticks kind of looked like penises because they were long and filled with white stuff and… well, that was basically where the comparisons ended, but Kenny thought it was fucking hilarious and seized every opportunity to make an innuendo about it until Stan was too disgusted to eat anymore. Cartman ended up happily finishing off the rest of the bag since Butters was sharing his packed lunch with Kenny, who didn't want Stan to waste any delicious and vaguely phallic food on his part.

"Um, thanks, I guess?" Stan had replied, then went back to the lunch line to get some fishsticks instead because, for some reason, their school was serving only breaded stuff that day. He didn't realize it was a bad idea until he came back to the table only to find Cartman in the throes of barely-suppressed hysteria, which was never a good sign.

"What's so goddamn funny, dude?" Kenny voiced their collective thoughts around a mouthful of grapes that Butters had just hand-fed to him.

Cartman drew his mouth into a straight line, apparently trying not to let any more giggles get past his lips. "'Ey… 'ey Stan… do you like fishsticks?" he asked, his shoulders shaking with restrained amusement.

"Well, yeah, I guess they're -oh _wow_, Cartman. Seriously?" Stan rolled his eyes as realization dawned on him. He'd thought that Cartman gave up on that stupid joke a long time ago, but then again, Cartman held onto a _lot _of things longer than was probably necessary.

Cartman guffawed and across the table, Butters turned to Kenny, frowning. "I-I don't think I get it."

Kenny patted him lightly on the shoulder. "It's just some stupid little joke, don't worry about it," he consoled. It must've been a good enough explanation for Butters because the small blond just smiled, shrugged, and threw a grape at Kenny, giggling when his boyfriend caught it expertly in his mouth. Stan was glad to see that Kenny was at least humoring Butters, no matter how uncomfortable he probably was, but it kind of made him wish Kyle was there.

Not that he wanted Kyle handfeeding him grapes, though. That was gay. He just wanted the normalcy of his Super Best Friend to balance out the noxious waves of affection oozing from Butters (and, indirectly, Kenny) and the general… well… Cartman-ness of Cartman. He spent the next ten minutes silently staring out the window, watching the snow fall without much interest and nibbling on his fishsticks with just as much absorption while Cartman ranted to no one in particular about the amazing influence of his fishsticks joke on the world of comedy.

Butters tore his loving gaze away from Kenny long enough to fix Stan with a concerned look. "Is somethin' wrong, Stan? You're lookin' kinda down."

"Stan, in lieu of a vagina, is bleeding out his ass since his precious Kylie-poo isn't here to suck his dick today," Cartman responded swiftly. "_That's _what is wrong with Stan, Butters."

Butters seemed only momentarily perplexed before a warm smile crossed his face. "Gosh, Stan, I guess I never realized you an' Kyle were like that, but boy, am I happy for you fellas!" he said. Next to him, Kenny snickered.

"Ugh, we're _not_ like that! Shut the fuck up, fatass!" Stan exploded, slamming his fists on the table. His chair scraped against the cafeteria floor as he stood up and began walking in the direction of the library. Maybe he'd finally get some peace and quiet there.

"Don't forget to stop by the nurse's office and pick up some Midol for those raging bitch hormones, Stan," Cartman called after him.

Stan sent up a silent prayer of thanks to God when school finally ended. Things had only gone downhill after lunch, and he was pretty sure he had bombed his Spanish 3 test without Kyle there to help him - and by help, he meant 'sit as close to Kyle as humanly possible without him noticing and peering over his shoulder to copy the correct answers, then vehemently denying it afterward'. Rinse and repeat. He was so eager to see Kyle that he only bothered stopping at his own house for 5 minutes to pick up the kosher ramen noodles that they kept specifically for him, and then he was off to the aforementioned boy's place before his Dad could try to distract him with the new 80-inch plasma screen TV he'd evidently bought that day. His parents wouldn't mind; they knew that Stan and Kyle had been figuratively attached at the hip since preschool (and literally attached at the hip for a week in freshman year).

When he strolled through the door of the Broflovski residence, not even bothering to knock because he'd been there so many times, he found Kyle doing exactly what he thought he'd be doing: sleeping on the couch with five layers of blankets wrapped around him while some Lifetime movie played on the TV. Stan decided to completely forgo the usual verbal acknowledgment of 'hey, dude', instead greeting Kyle by beaning him with the ramen.

Kyle's eyes flew open in alarm, then relaxed when he saw who had hit him. "Gee, Stan, I've always wanted to be woken up by a packet of noodles to the face," he grumbled, his groggy voice edged with sarcasm as he reluctantly sat up and inspected the bag. "Wow, it's even kosher. I'm impressed."

Stan just grinned, brushing away some used tissues off the couch and plopping down in the empty space next to his sick friend. He didn't say it, but Kyle was kind of funny-looking when he was sick. There were dark circles under his eyes that made him look like a sleep-deprived junkie and his Jewfro was deflated like it was sick, too. "Figured you'd appreciate it. Now eat that up, we've got stuff to do." He elbowed him playfully in the side, although Kyle probably didn't even feel it through his blanket-cocoon.

The Jew raised an eyebrow. "What kind of stuff?" he asked, pushing himself off the couch and wandering over to the kitchen, still swathed in pastel colored Disney Princess blankets. Stan decided he'd have to ask him about _that_ one later as he followed him and sat on the edge of the countertop.

"Well, I was thinking since we had that huge-ass snowstorm last night, we could make good use of it by throwing snowballs at cars and maybe later we can go sledding. Y'know, just dicking around like usual," he said, swinging his legs.

Kyle put the bowl of ramen in the microwave and turned to face him with a deadpan expression. "Stan, I'm sick," he stated as if he were talking to an extremely retarded 5-year-old.

"Yeah, I know. Duh."

"…Stan, I'm _sick_. With a _cold_." He glanced at the thermometer on the back porch. "It's _-15 degrees outside_."

"So? The sky is blue and you're a natural redhead. Is there anything else obvious you'd like to point out?"

Kyle opened his mouth, presumably to protest if the sudden downward swoop of his eyebrows was any indication, but Stan was luckily saved from getting an earful of a 'Kyle lecture' when a large women with gray-streaked red hair came sauntering in.

"Hi, Mrs. Broflovski," Stan greeted pleasantly.

"Oh, hello, Stanley!" Sheila Broflovski greeted with an equal amount of amity as she pulled him into a hug. "How are you, dear?"

"I'm fine, thanks," he said, eternally grateful for the growth spurt he had had in 7th grade that made him no longer at 'boob level' with Kyle's mom.

"That's good to hear." She relinquished her death grip on Stan and turned to address her son for the first time since she'd entered the kitchen. "What time will you and Stan be getting back, bubbe?"

Kyle gave a longsuffering groan. "Why does everyone automatically assume that I'm feeling up to leaving the house today?" he bemoaned, pulling the bowl of ramen out of the microwave and wincing when it burnt his fingers.

"Kyle, you've been laying on the couch all day, and for what? A few little sniffles? You're not even running a temperature, for Abraham's sake! All you need is to get some fresh air and spend some time with your best friend," Mrs. Broflovski insisted.

Kyle slurped some noodles into his mouth. "Maybe."

Stan frowned at the obvious lack of conviction. "You… you really don't wanna hang out with me, huh?"

Kyle almost choked. "No, no, that's not it!" he said hastily. "I _do_ wanna hang out with you! It's just the principle of the thing, you know?"

_No, I don't know,_ Stan thought, but since Kyle had loads of weird reasons for being pissy, he decided to just go along with it. "Sure, dude. I understand. But does that mean…?"

Kyle lifted the bowl to his lips and smirked. "If you're wondering whether I'm agreeing to hang out with you, then the answer is yes. It's always been yes. I just felt the need to bitch about something."

"Language, Kyle," Sheila admonished, although she was smiling. "Have fun, boys, and remember: no drugs, sex, or alcohol, because I _will_ find out and you _will_ be punished accordingly!"

"Yeah yeah, I know, Mom," Kyle said, rolling his eyes. He placed the bowl in the sink and went back into the living room to peel off the layers of blankets and slip on his outerwear. Once he'd laced up his boots, put on his green ushanka and stuffed a wad of Kleenex into the pocket of his coat ("just in case"), they both went outside and walked down the road until they found a nice hedge of bushes to hide behind near their old elementary school. Thirty minutes later, they had already stockpiled an arsenal of well-formed snowballs and used them to pelt 22 vehicles, including the police car of Officer Barbrady, who proceeded to run out onto the street and yell at a stop sign until someone was kind enough to pull over and gently inform him that he was ranting at an inanimate object.

Kyle and Stan ducked lower beneath the cover of the hedges, subduing their laughter in the sleeves of their coats. Once the sounds of conversation died down between Barbrady and the random citizen, followed by the slamming of car doors, Kyle turned to Stan.

"This is a little juvenile, don't you think?" he asked.

"Of course I _think_, Kyle," Stan replied smartly as he stood up and brushed the snow off his pants. "I have a brain."

Stan could tell that Kyle was trying very hard to hide his amusement at that, but he knew him well enough to see right through his façade. "God, you're such a smartass."

"You know you love it."

"I do," Kyle readily agreed, falling into step alongside Stan as they walked away from the elementary school. As they headed down the road, mutually deciding that the woods near Stark's Pond would be their next destination, Stan filled Kyle in on every little detail of his day, from the way each of his seven pencils broke in first hour to the infuriating exchange during lunch.

"Damn, dude," Kyle whistled. "That really sucks. Especially the whole thing with Cartman." He wrinkled his nose and kicked at a pine cone that was sticking out of the snow. Probably imagining it was Cartman's head, Stan thought.

"Yeah, the fatass is a lot harder to deal with when you aren't - JESUS CHRIST!" he exclaimed.

Kyle laughed. "Uh huh, I bet Cartman _is _less of a pain in the ass when you're the Son of God," he mused. "Well, I mean, _I _don't think he's the Son of God, but..."

Stan would've palmed his forehead in exasperation had his hand not been trembling. "No, look!" he insisted, pointing a shaky index finger at a cluster of pine trees around 20 feet to their left. "I swear on my nuts I just saw something moving over there."

Kyle's eyes followed the invisible line connecting Stan's finger to the trees in question. For a moment, he was silent, and then he adopted the same 'retarded child' voice he had used on Stan earlier. It was quickly becoming annoying. "Um, Stan? In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of a forest. There's bound to be some wildlife running around."

The branches of the trees rustled again and two bright yellow orbs stared out at Stan through the leaves.

"There it is!" he said, his voice cracking.

Kyle's expression morphed into one of surprise. "Whoa, dude… I think you might actually be onto something here," he said with arched eyebrows.

"Of course I am. Now come on." He grabbed Kyle's hand and practically dragged him in the direction of the trees.

"Oh, but Stan, this is just all too soon," Kyle declared melodramatically, placing the back of his free hand against his forehead. "I don't think it's proper to ravish me under the trees when we haven't even officially made the leap from friendship into romance yet."

Stan felt the heat rush to his face, reminded of Cartman's earlier taunts, and grumbled, "Dickwad." He stood at the base of the largest tree and looked up through the branches as he scanned for any signs of the mysterious creature.

Kyle ignored the insult, instead deciding to join Stan in gazing up blankly at the tree. "Whatever this… _thing _is, it better not be another goddamn Jackovasaur… hey, wait, is that it?"

What at first glance appeared to be a very large, very fat squirrel scrambled clumsily down the tree trunk. The two friends were about to dismiss it as such and return to doing more productive things like sledding or peeing their names in the snow when it swiveled its broad head toward them, revealing two unblinking yellow eyes in the center of a black-and-white striped face. They both shrieked in an incredibly girly manner - although, if anyone asked, they would stubbornly refer to it as a "manly shout of displeasure" - and Stan practically jumped bridal style into Kyle's arms.

"The hell?" Kyle sputtered. They were frozen to the spot, watching and waiting for the strange animal to attack them, and relaxed a little when all it did was blink and let out a kind of pitiful cough.

"Aww, dude, I think it's sick," Stan said, frowning sympathetically. The creature sneezed as if to confirm this and Stan put on his best 'can we keep it?' face.

Kyle's forehead wrinkled in an all-too familiar expression of disapproval right before he dumped Stan unceremoniously on his ass. "I see what you're doing here, Stan, and it's not going to work."

"Why not?" Stan whined. "Just look at it, dude. I mean, yeah, it's kind of weird but… it's still an animal in trouble. It might die if we don't get it some help."

The Jew crossed his arms over his chest. "You know how things happen in this fucked-up town. If we keep this… whatever the hell it is, we'll somehow inexplicably end up in Peru, or travel back in time and accidentally kill Bill Clinton or something, I don't know. My point is, we're just asking for trouble here."

The creature dropped to the ground and limped forward to lick Stan's hand with a rough purple tongue. Stan grinned smugly, earning him a withering look from Kyle.

"You're not going to let this go, are you," he stated flatly.

"Nope," Stan said, his grin growing wider as he scooped their new pet up into his arms. "Don't be afwaid, little cuddly-wupsiekins; Momma Kyle's just got a stick up his ass," he cooed.

"Do not!" Kyle retorted maturely. "I'm just being righteously cynical, that's all. And hey, how come _I_ have to be the Mom?"

Stan patted the mutant's head. "Three words, Kyle: Disney Princess blankets. There are more reasons than that, but you're looking kinda rage-filled right now and I'm afraid you'll unleash your Kung Jew on me if I list them. Now gimme your hat."

"'Kung Jew'? Is this what happens when you have no one else but Cartman to hang out with for a whole day?" he wondered aloud, then handed over his ushanka without question. At least, without question until Stan placed their newfound pet into the hat, then took off his scarf and used it to cover the whimpering creature. "…I don't think I want to know what you're doing. Wait, yes I do, because that's _my hat,_ goddammit."

"I'm just hiding Gorak until we get back to your house. As strange as South Park is, I'm still pretty sure people will look at us like we're fuckin' nuts if they see this little guy."

"Gorak?" Kyle echoed. He rolled his eyes in exasperation, but the smile tugging at the corner of his lips betrayed him. "Oh no, not this again. Maybe we _are _fuckin' nuts, dude."

"Probably," Stan agreed.

* * *

Kenny had a lot of time to think.

Normally his most intense thinking sessions took place during his frequent trips to Hell - especially while sitting in a White Castle, because White Castle was unfortunately the only restaurant in the Underworld - but being as it was that he was currently very much alive, he had to settle with the McCormick family outhouse. (yes, they _did _have a regular bathroom, but the last time they tried to flush it, the entirety of South Park had been overrun with sewage for a week, so they decided to use the outhouse in consideration for their fellow townsfolk) It was also the only place on their property where you could hear yourself think, so that's why Kenny had been sitting in there for over an hour while his Mom hosted a bingo party in the house and his Dad drunkenly lit off firecrackers in the backyard.

_Boooooom. Crrraaaack. _Kenny pressed his head against one of the cedar walls of the outhouse and sighed. Sure, he had watched the first few go off, but then he realized that he was basically making himself a giant walking bulls-eye by being in the general vicinity and, deciding he didn't really feel like going through the trouble of dying an explosive death that day, decided to seek refuge in the outhouse.

He figured he could just pass the time by jacking off until his father had his fill of dumbassery for the day, but shortly after entering, he remembered with much dismay that there was no masturbation material in the outhouse. As terrible as that was, Kenny McCormick wasn't going to risk getting hit by a stray firecracker, even if it _was _for porn. He also wasn't feeling creative enough to access the 'spank bank', so his thoughts began to drift in boredom.

The thing that had been occupying the majority of his time the last few days was Butters, so naturally that was the first subject that floated to the forefront of his mind as he sat on the john. So far, this whole 'dating' thing had actually been pretty nice. Kenny was still sure that he only liked Butters as a good friend, but he'd be downright lying if he said that he wasn't at least somewhat physically attracted to him. He wasn't sure if he really had a type - anything with a dick or a vagina, basically, and a brain, because he _did _have standards - but there was something about Butters' innocence that kind of made Kenny want to do dirty things to him. Then again, Kenny would be more than willing to do dirty things to any of his friends, with the notable exception of Cartman because that would just be fucking nasty.

A positive side-effect was all the affection he had been getting lately. He supposed that some part of him had always craved that feeling of attachment, since growing up as the middle child in an admittedly dirt poor family meant that he never got much love from his parents. Now that he thought about it, his past girlfriends (all 4 of them) and boyfriends (all… 1 of them) had never been that affectionate. They had mostly been indifferent at best, cold at worst, used him for sex, and then broken up with him when they realized his poverty and habit of dying every few weeks were more than just glorified rumors. Kenny understood this and didn't really mind it. Hell, even _he _couldn't find something worth caring about in himself, so why should anyone else? But Butters was different. Butters knew him and actually gave a shit about him - something that none of his previous partners had ever done.

He felt a sad smile come to his lips as he thought about the boy. Butters was such a nice guy. The nicest person he'd ever met, in fact. That's why he'd have to lay down a few ground rules in their relationship; he didn't want it to get too serious, because he knew Butters would just wind up hurting more in the end that way, and Kenny wanted to make the inevitable end of this whole 'boyfriends' thing as easy as possible on him. After some careful deliberation, he came up with two basic guidelines: 1. Only spend as much time with Butters as necessary, and 2. No instigating any kisses. If Butters starts the kiss, then kiss back, but don't be the one to initiate it. The more he thought about them, the more dickish they seemed, but he was 100% sure that they would pay off in the long run. Well, more like 53% sure, but it was the thought that counted… right? Kenny didn't always have the best ideas, but no one could say that he didn't have purely the best intentions.

The harsh barks of stray dogs were suddenly added to the musical amalgam of firecrackers, signifying a stranger approaching the house. It was most likely one of Kevin's 'customers' swinging by to pick up some pot again, but Kenny peered through the crescent-shaped hole in the door just to make sure. A big bundle of blue was hurriedly crossing the street, a blue bundle that upon closer inspection turned out to be none other than Butters. He couldn't help but laugh at the kid's choice of clothing: a thick scarf that covered the entire lower half of his face, a dark blue toque, and a pair of oversized mittens. Kenny was puzzled over this for the three seconds it took him to remember that it was well below 0 degrees and most people would consider that to be 'ball-freezing' temperature, and then he understood why so many layers of clothing were necessary.

The firecrackers and possible impending death now forgotten, Kenny made sure his fly was zipped up and then ran to the front yard to greet Butters. "Hey! Butters!" he called, waving his arms frantically.

Butters had been looking pretty damn scared - probably because he was extremely vulnerable (i.e., rape bait) and alone in the 'bad' part of town - but his expression brightened immediately upon seeing Kenny. "Heya, Ken!" He flashed Kenny his megawatt smile and pulled him into a hug. "I missed you!"

Kenny laughed, wrapping his arms around Butters' waist and resting his chin on the top of the shorter boy's head. "It's only been two hours, dude," he said with a breathy chuckle, "but yeah, I missed you too. How come you aren't still at Debate Club with Cartman?"

Butters pulled back slightly, his mitten-covered hands resting on the front of Kenny's parka, and made a face. "I-I left early. It's just too stinkin' boring, an' it's not like I even get ta do anything. Eric only drags me along so he has someone dumb enough to agree with him."

"Need me to beat him up again?" Kenny offered jokingly.

Butters grinned. "Nah, that's okay, but thanks anyways. I ain't mad at Eric." He paused and looked away for a few seconds as he chewed ruminatively on the inside of his cheek. "Uh, if ya wanna know the real reason why I left early, it's just 'cause I, um… well… I was wonderin' if we could hang out today? I-if that's okay with you, o'course."

_Shit_. Rule #1 was flashing in his head like a blazing neon sign. He let his hands fall away from Butters' hips and stuffed them in the pockets of his parka. "Sorry, dude, but I'm… just kinda busy right now."

_Double shit_. Any trace of cautious hope in Butters' blue eyes immediately fell away and Kenny could see that he was trying valiantly to not look so disappointed, but Butters had a tendency to look like one of those puppies in the ASPCA commercials when he was sad, and it would be kinda funny if it weren't so damn heart-wrenching. "O-oh. Son of a biscuit," he murmured, his knuckles mashing together furiously. "I shoulda known you'd be busy. I mean, you're a cool fella and you prob'ly got stuff ta do, a-an' whatever that stuff is, it's a whole lot more important than hangin' out with me 'cause I'm just a… ah… goddamn Melvin."

Kenny felt like someone had just stabbed him in the heart with a spork - and no, he wasn't just being hyperbolic, since Cartman had actually done it to him in 6th grade. He didn't know what it was about Butters that made him feel like a giant pussy, but he was finding it increasingly harder to say no to him, and that was a little scary.

Butters still wasn't looking him in the eye, which only made him feel worse. "So, um, I-I guess I'll just go home an' let ya get back to the…" He glanced at the backyard and finished his statement with a questioning lilt. "…outhouse?"

Kenny blinked, suddenly feeling very, very stupid. "Um. Yeah. Bowel problems," he lied.

He expected Butters to be repulsed, angry, or some other similarly normal reaction, but because it was _Butters _he was talking about here, he didn't get a 'normal' reaction. Two blond eyebrows arched and then furrowed in pity as Butters processed this information. "Aw, gee, Kenny, I sure know how that one goes. Ya need me to pick up some medicine at the Pharmacy?"

Kenny shook his head. "No, it's fine, really."

Butters nodded and took a few steps back. "Alrighty then. You just rest yourself up, Ken, an' I hope you get better real soon." And with that, he turned around and began to walk away, his head bowed between sagging shoulders.

Kenny watched him slowly plowing a path through the snow and felt the guilt hit him like a kick to the crotch. The farther away Butters got, the more his resolve crumbled, but he couldn't muster up the courage or the words to call him back. Eventually Butters disappeared over the hill at the end of the road and Kenny headed back inside the house, opting to brave his Mom and her crazy friends instead of freezing to death in the outhouse. At least there was a space heater in the living room.

For the next half hour, Kenny did everything he could to keep his mind off of Butters. He played his ColecoVision, helped Kevin organize his marijuana by strain, even grudgingly set out a plate of commodity cheese and saltine crackers for the bingo players. But he still couldn't shake the gnawing notion in the back of his mind that he had just really hurt Butters' feelings.

That nagging feeling kept growing like a tumor until, finally, he found himself sitting cross-legged on his bed and punching Butters' phone number into his crappy welfare TracFone. He nestled the bulky cell phone in the crook of his neck and waited for him to pick up, hoping that the poor kid wasn't pissed off at him or bawling his eyes out. He wasn't complaining or anything, but the prospect of Butters' depression was making him have to walk on eggshells.

"Kenny?" came Butters' quiet voice after a few seconds. "How are you? Didja change your mind 'bout the medicine?"

Kenny leaned back against the rusting headboard and suppressed a laugh. Of course the first thing on Butters' mind would be if Kenny still needed some goddamn medicine. "I'm feeling a hell of a lot better, actually. You still up to doing something today?"

Butters' enthusiasm practically poured out of the speakers. "Oh, you bet I am!" he squeaked, and Kenny heard a sudden explosion of sound as Butters moved around. "Hey, what kinda shoes d'ya wear?"

Kenny blinked at the non sequitur. "Like, what size I wear? Because the only kind of shoes _I _wear are the shitty ones."

"Yup, the size," Butters affirmed.

Kenny looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes contemplatively. "Size… 9, I think."

"Hey, me too!" Butters exclaimed, as if them having something in common was a momentous occasion. "Whoo, that's awful convenient. Wanna meet me at Stark's Pond?"

Kenny scooped his boots up off the bedroom floor. "Sounds good, dude. See you there in a bit."

"Bye Ken!" The phone line clicked off and Kenny felt relief wash over him. Butters might have been upset before he called, but he definitely sounded happy when Kenny started talking to him. Kenny was just happy that he didn't have to feel so damn guilty anymore.

He finished putting on his boots and went back outside, the sounds of firecrackers no longer filling the air. His curiosity momentarily getting the better of him, he went to the backyard and found the source of this sudden silence: his Dad, passed out amid a pile of beer bottles. Kenny didn't even bat an eye as he dragged him into the safety of the house. This was just business as usual for the McCormick family. The distraction made him arrive at Stark's Pond about 10 minutes after Butters, but he figured it was worth it if it meant his Dad went another day without dying of hypothermia.

Butters was waiting for him by the bench, holding two pairs of ice skates in his hands. Kenny groaned inwardly. Ice skating? Seriously? The last time he'd skated on Stark's Pond (which was a long-ass time ago, by the way), he'd ended up at the bottom of it. Out of all the deaths he'd ever experienced, drowning and all of its derivatives were definitely his least favorites, and he would like to avoid it as much as possible.

"Butters," Kenny stated flatly as he approached, gesturing at the skates, "no offense to you or anything, but I think I'd rather slit my throat with those little fuckers than put them on my feet."

The noticeable eagerness that had brightened Butters' face at Kenny's appearance was quickly replaced by a pout. "Aw, c'mon, Kenny," he whined. "It'll be fun! You don't even have ta be any good at it or nothin'. I mean, I still got a whole lotta practicin' to do, so I won't judge you."

"You don't understand. God is an evil bastard with a sick sense of humor and I _know _he'd get his rocks off by making me drown in front of my… boyfriend… which is definitely what will happen if I go out there." He gestured wildly at the frozen pond.

Butters didn't say anything. He just slipped on his pair of skates, his expression blank and unreadable. Kenny was starting to worry that he'd done something to hurt Butters' feelings again when Butters looked up and flashed him a simple smile. "Don't worry. I ain't gonna let you drown on my watch." The next thing he knew, Butters was handing him the other pair of skates. Kenny tried to make them spontaneously combust through the power of his stare and sat down to put them on with a resigned sigh when that didn't work. He was still kind of deathly afraid of drowning, but he trusted Butters more than anyone else he knew, and he also really didn't want to look like a dick again.

"Hey, look! It's Stan an' Kyle! I wonder what they're doin'?" Butters suddenly said, and Kenny stopped tying up the laces on the skates to look where he was pointing. After a few seconds of squinty staring, he saw the two friends walking toward the forest a little ways away.

Kenny smirked. "Heh, I bet you any amount of money that they're gonna fuck behind those trees," he said.

Butters' eyes widened. "Gosh, really? Wuh-what makes you think that?"

"Dude, they've been trying to get into each other's pants since they were old enough to actually _wear _pants. They don't know it yet, though."

"Huh. I woulda never thought that about them," he admitted, incredulous.

Kenny shrugged. "They were horny little bastards, just like me, but they were better at hiding it." He stood up and leaned against Butters as they hobbled awkwardly toward the pond. Butters was the first one to make the transition from snow to ice, lightly tapping his blades against the smooth surface before turning back to Kenny, who was trying hard just to stay upright a few feet away.

"This ice seems pretty darn sturdy to me," he announced. When Kenny didn't say anything, Butters smiled at him reassuringly and outstretched a gloved hand. "You'll be okay, Ken. Lookit all the other guys an' gals skatin' around! They haven't fallen through yet, an' you won't neither!"

"Right, they haven't fallen through _yet_," Kenny pointed out, but he grinned and stepped onto the ice anyway. Butters' reassuring smile shifted to a goofy one as their hands linked together, melting the last of Kenny's doubts. The reason he had agreed to this 'dating' thing in the first place was to make Butters happy, after all, so shouldn't he be doing whatever he could to make that happen?

They started off slower than molasses, but Butters was patient and politely glossed over Kenny's shitty skating skills in favor of giving him pointers. Eventually they got to the point where Kenny didn't have to lean on Butters for support and they could both skate at about equal speeds, although Butters was still far more graceful and would probably always be. Kenny didn't care; actually, he thought it was funny that Butters was so good at typical girly activities like dancing and ice skating. It was because of things like this that no one had been even remotely surprised when Butters came out of the closet.

"Fuck yeah, I think I'm actually getting the hang of this!" Kenny cried victoriously as he and Butters glided around the edge of the pond.

Butters clapped him on the back, nearly making Kenny lose his balance. "See? I-I told ya so!"

"Yeah yeah, you were right as usual, Butters," he said, rolling his eyes playfully. "Don't get cocky."

"As usual?" Butters repeated. His cheeks were a little flushed, either from the cold or bashfulness or possibly a combination of both. "O-Oh, I wouldn't say _that_. My folks don't seem ta think I'm right about much."

"Screw what they think, honestly," Kenny said. He'd never liked Mr. and Mrs. Stotch that much and didn't see the point in hiding it.

Butters didn't put down or defend his parents, just bit his lower lip as if considering whether Kenny was right. It couldn't have been the first time someone had told him what giant dicks his parents were. After a few seconds of silence, he nodded and changed the subject. "Wanna go faster?"

Kenny stomped down hard on the urge to make a "that's what she said" joke, not wanting to _completely _corrupt Butters with his perverted sense of humor, and nodded. "Sure." Suddenly, an idea hit him. "Hey, how about we make this a little more interesting and race each other around the pond? I don't know what'll be in it for the winner, but we can figure it out after I beat your ass."

He flashed Butters an insouciant grin that Butters returned. "You're awful confident for ah- a beginner, mister." Then he zipped ahead without warning, leaving a momentarily stunned Kenny in his wake.

Kenny laughed and tried - key word, _tried _- to catch up, silently cursing his scrawniness. Although he and Butters were about the same height and looked so much alike that adults had mistaken them for brothers on more than one occasion, Butters at least had the advantage of a healthy diet. Speaking of a healthy diet, maybe if Kenny won, he could make Butters buy him dinner. The thought gave Kenny the extra boost of speed he needed.

He was still trailing about 8 feet behind when Butters shot him an amused look over his shoulder and slowed down ever so slightly.

"Bad move, Stotch," he called out teasingly as the gap between them began to disappear. There was now only a couple inches separating them and Kenny was close enough to hear Butters' barely labored breathing. He lengthened his stride until they were side by side, and he could've sworn the Heavens had opened up to beautiful and dramatic music as he drew nearer to passing Butters.

The premature celebration was cut off short when Kenny realized, belatedly, that it was probably not very smart to round a corner while trying to speed up. "Fuck!" he hissed as he stumbled forward. Both arms instinctively shot out and grabbed fistfuls of Butters' coat, yanking the boy down with him as Kenny spun off the pond and crashed into a snow bank.

Kenny wasn't aware of much except for the fact that Butters was giggling and that he must be too, since he could hear another person laughing. He was also aware that there was an uncomfortable amount of snow down the front of his pants and it would probably be even more uncomfortable when it melted hours later. The last thing he became acutely aware of was the feeling of Butters' body pressed flush underneath his and the practically nonexistent distance between their faces.

Butters became cognizant of this fact only seconds after Kenny. His giggling quietly trailed away and he watched Kenny with bright, unblinking blue eyes, and Kenny found himself being overwhelmed by the rush of emotions flowing out of them. The toque had flown off Butters' head sometime during their fall, making tufts of thin blonde hair fall down to frame his slightly reddened face. Kenny didn't want to use a gay word like 'beautiful' to describe Butters, but it was the only adjective that would come to mind, so he went with it.

Before he really even knew what he was doing, he cupped the side of Butters' face and brought their lips together. Butters vocalized his approval with a pleasantly startled sound in the back of his throat as he pressed into the kiss with a sort of halting eagerness, hesitantly snaking his arms around Kenny's back to anchor him to the spot. Kenny was muffling his moan against Butters' soft lips, noting that they tasted like Burt's Bees, when he remembered:

_2. No instigating any kisses. If Butters starts the kiss, then kiss back, but don't be the one to initiate it._

He immediately scrambled off of Butters, sinking deeper into the snow in his haste to get away. Those goddamn rules had been put into place an hour ago and already he was breaking them. He touched a finger to his lips as if he could feel the residue of the kiss and shook his head. His guilt told him to not lead Butters on, to not let this get too deep, but… the other part of him said that what he was doing was _right_. Butters wanted to be kissed, so it wasn't like he was being taken advantage of, and besides, it's not like he knew that Kenny didn't like him that way. If Kenny liked the kissing, and Butters liked it too, then how could it be wrong?

Butters frowned and pushed himself into a sitting position, dislodging pieces of snow from his hair in the process. "What's wrong, Kenny? Does my breath smell bad?" He began to rub his knuckles together though the mittens. "Aw, hamburgers, I knew I shouldn'ta had those Funyuns after school. They may taste good, but they make your breath stink somethin' terrible and- mfff!" He was cut off when Kenny framed his face and brought their lips together once more. The kiss was softer and shorter this time, but when Kenny pulled away, he couldn't help but chuckle at Butters' besotted expression.

"Oh, wow," the smaller blond whispered dazedly.

"Yeah," Kenny said, returning his lopsided grin. He had seen enough cheesy girl movies (courtesy of Bebe) to know that this was probably a pretty romantic moment, what with the sun beginning to set behind them and the sweeping kiss that had occurred just moments before, but the ambience was ruined when a loud growl issued from his stomach. "Um. So… who won the race? It was a little too close to know for sure." He grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his exposed head.

"I-I guess it was kinda hard to tell, huh? But, if ya wanna know what I think…" He leaned in close to whisper conspiratorially into Kenny's ear. "…I think that kiss was just perfect enough to make you the winner."

Kenny chuckled, wondering if this was Butters' attempt at being flirtatious, and gave him a playful shove. "You're flattering me, Butters. Got any money?"

Butters blinked at the odd request but fished around in his pocket anyway. After a moment, he pulled out his hand to reveal an impressive amount of lint, a piece of gum, and a couple dollars plus loose change. "I'm awful sorry, Ken, but that's all I got," he said, his face falling.

"Naw dude, that's alright. I was hoping we could go and get some dinner, maybe at Bennigan's 'cause I know how much you like it there, but I think we're just gonna have to get something off the dollar menu at Wendy's." Kenny stood, pulling up the hood of his parka, and offered a helping hand to Butters. "You don't mind, do you?"

Butters gasped, as if just the idea of him disagreeing with Kenny on _anything_ was preposterous. "'Course I don't mind! I love Wendy's!" he exclaimed, grabbing Kenny's hand and pulling himself up. "I don't get ta go there too much though, since Mom a-an' Dad think I'll end up like that feller in _Supersize Me _if I eat any fast food."

As they left the pond, walking hand in hand, Kenny decided that maybe it was better to not be constantly overanalyze things. After all, he was on his way to having a warm dinner with someone he genuinely cared about (even though it wasn't in the way the other person wanted), and that was good enough for him. He'd have time to feel guilty later.


	7. Tiny Vessels

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone who took the time to read and review the last chapter. I'm pretty thankful for this story; my favorite Grandma (yes, I have a favorite Grandma, but doesn't everyone?) has been in and out of the hospital with heart complications for the last week, so this was a nice distraction.

I'm also really loving the superhero arc going on in South Park right now, especially because asdfjfkj Kenny is Mysterionnnn! Kenny episodes always make me happy, if you couldn't tell by the gratuitous keyboard-smashing. I also have an idea for a smutfic floating around but I'm probably gonna pussy out, so don't plan on it.

**Disclaimer: **South Park does not belong to me, and it's probably better if it stays that way.

**Chapter 6**

Butters wasn't sure what had gotten into Kenny lately.

The first few days they were together, it didn't feel all that different from their friendship. They held hands - which they never did before - and hugged more often than they used to, but they had only kissed twice, and both of those were just little pecks initiated by Butters. Kenny seemed to just tolerate Butters' careful advances, as opposed to being an active participant. He wasn't complaining, though; he figured that maybe Kenny just needed to get used to the change, and he was willing to wait as long as Kenny needed.

But Kenny didn't really need any more time to adjust, if the way he was shoving his tongue down Butters' throat was any indication.

He shifted a bit uncomfortably, trying to somehow string together a coherent thought while Kenny kissed him senseless inside the janitor's closet. Lunch had ended about 5 minutes ago, and instead of hanging out with Stan, Kyle, and Cartman in the commons area until class started like they usually did, Kenny had practically dragged him out of the cafeteria and into a more secluded section of the school, where he proceeded to pin Butters between a vacuum cleaner and a trash can and French him like no tomorrow.

Kenny slid his tongue along his lower lip and Butters gasped, accidentally knocking over a bucket. He was afraid that at any moment, the janitor would walk in on them and have them kicked out of school for the next three weeks (which was what had happened to the last couple that was found playing tonsil hockey in the closet), but he was finding it kind of hard to worry because _oh, sweet Jesus, this feels good_.

His body practically ached in disappointment when Kenny abruptly pulled away. They were both panting hard, and in the murky light, Butters could see Kenny's half-lidded blue eyes boring into him.

"How… how are you doing today?" he asked breathlessly. Sometime during the kissing, Butters had lowered Kenny's hood to twist his fingers in those golden locks, and now they framed his intensely serious face in disarray.

Butters blinked, trying to think through the post-kiss haze and the backlash he was receiving from the sudden change in mood. He was perplexed by the seemingly out-of-nowhere question. "…Wuh-well, I'm doin' pretty good now," he said, smiling a little. People rarely asked him how he felt. "I was achin' pretty badly when I woke up this morning, but I musta just slept wrong. Why'd you ask?"

Kenny shrugged and began pressing sloppy kisses along Butters' jawline. "I don't know. I just worry sometimes."

Butters shivered, partially from the feeling of Kenny's lips brushing against his skin, and partially from those words. Kenny, worrying about _him_? Did he know about the therapy? The thought made him unconsciously dig his fingers deeper into the material of Kenny's coat as his parents' words echoed through his mind. _Don't tell anyone about this, sweetie… you don't want your friends to think you're a little freak, do you?_

"No," he whispered, screwing his eyes shut. _I don't want them to know. Especially not Kenny. _

Kenny paused and tilted his head to the side questioningly. "Huh? You want me to stop?" he asked. "'Cause that's totally okay. I mean, I'm pretty sprung right now, but if you're not… like I said. It's fine. I'm not gonna be a dick and pressure you into anything."

Butters clamped his mouth shut and looked away. The truth was he wanted nothing more than to keep kissing Kenny, because he wasn't sure he had ever felt anything so mind-numbingly pleasurable in his life, but class was probably going to start soon and he didn't like the direction this conversation was going in anyway. "Ah, i-it's not that I want you ta stop," he explained, nodding in the direction of the clock hanging on the wall behind them, "but class is gonna start soon, an' I don't wanna be late."

Kenny turned to look at the clock and sighed. "Ugh, fuck. Sorry about that." Silence fell upon the cramped room as each boy adjusted their respective rumpled clothing and sneakily entered the hallway (well, Butters was the one being surreptitious, while Kenny was strutting around like he was unashamed and maybe even a little proud of their closet make-out session).

Butters arrived at his Economy classroom just as the bell rang, trying valiantly to ignore the disapproving glare of his teacher while he slid into an empty seat behind Wendy and Bebe. At the moment, Cartman was nowhere to be found, which confused him a bit because Cartman usually came to class early just so he could hurriedly copy - or, in his words, "share" - Butters' answers.

He didn't have to wonder too long because the fatass himself strolled in moments later during the middle of roll call, a smirk poking through the faint beginnings of a scruffy beard.

"Late again, Eric," Mr. Wang drawled as he checked off something on a clipboard. "One more and you'll be in detention so fast your head will spin."

"I look forward to that day, Mr. Wang. I always thought that scene in _The Exorcist _where the chick's head starts spinning around was so coo'," Cartman said with a fake smile, plopping down in the previously unoccupied space next to Butters. He absently tapped his stubby fingers against the smooth surface of the desk and his smile grew smug. "Don't mind Mr. Wang, ladies; he's just jealous of my ultra-sexy stubble."

"I doubt it," Wendy chirped.

"Yeah, not even Brad Pitt would want those chin pubes," Bebe remarked flippantly as she scanned an issue of _17 Magazine_.

"'Ey, fuck you bitches! I didn't ask for your opinion!" Cartman yelled, pounding his fist on the desk. Butters flinched and scooted his chair a little farther away, not wanting to come between an argument like this.

"Well, whose opinion _did _you ask for?" Wendy asked. "Butters'?"

Bebe laughed while Cartman stuck his nose in the air. "Why yes, actually." Butters buried his nose in his textbook and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible, but sadly, it didn't work. "Butters, tell these blind hobags that my beard is totally effing sexy," Cartman commanded.

Butters sighed and reluctantly closed the book. In truth, he thought it looked like Cartman had killed a mouse, cut off its fur and then taped it to his chin, but he was too polite to tell him that. "Uh, I'unno if I'd call it 'sexy'," he hedged. "But it looks nice enough."

Cartman swallowed the fib hook, line, and sinker and turned his triumphant gaze on the two girls sitting in front of them. "See? Told ya so! And Butters is gay, so his opinion automatically cancels out your female negativity. Stick _that _in your juicebox and suck it, sluts!"

Butters sighed again and let his head drop onto his desk. This was, undoubtedly, the longest hour of his day, everyday. He wished Kenny could be in this class with him. It would be so much more bearable if Kenny was there to tell perverted jokes and teach him how to type "boobies" in the calculator, like they used to do in elementary school. The memory made him grin.

Wendy and Bebe exchanged a look. "Whatever, Cartman," Wendy said, folding her arms across her chest. "Just keep deluding yourself. You've been doing it for years, so why stop now?"

That succeeded in shutting Cartman up for a few seconds. Butters' eyes rolled up from the desk to see the fleeting melancholy and yearning that crossed Eric's features, and he couldn't help but feel bad for him. Not even Cartman deserved to have his heart broken and then thrown in his face every day. It was no wonder that he was so bitter.

But since this was Cartman, anything that might have garnered him further sympathy was swiftly displaced by a vicious scowl. "Gently remove your tampon and try again, bitch," he sneered.

Wendy half-turned and opened her mouth to say something, but her retort was cut off when Mr. Wang walked to the front of the classroom to begin that day's lecture. She shot him one last smoldering glare before directing her full attention to the whiteboard.

For the next 30 minutes, Cartman doodled cartoonishly violent images of Wendy and Kyle (complete with an exaggerated Jew schnoz) being eaten alive by a dragon, while Butters tried to ignore the sounds of angry scribbling coming from the boy next to him and focus on taking notes like a good little student.

"Motherfucking bitch whore cunt," Cartman cursed under his breath.

Butters frowned. He wasn't as fazed by his friends' excessive swearing as he had been when they were kids, but he still disapproved of it. "I-I don't think that's a very healthy way ta deal with your anger, Eric," he opined.

"I don't think your _face _is a very healthy way to deal with my anger."

And, well, that was that.

Mr. Wang got off his soapbox (literally) after half the class had either fallen asleep, jumped out their first-story window, or shoved a pencil through their eardrum. Butters, Cartman, Wendy and Bebe were among the half that hadn't done any of the above, and as such, they were generously rewarded with poorly-wrapped suckers. Butters smiled at the flavor of his: orange, a color he had always associated with Kenny. He popped it into his mouth and sighed in contentment as he started on his homework.

"This looks like it could give me AIDs," Cartman decided, eyeing his brown lollipop suspiciously. After a few seconds of what seemed like intense concentration, he shrugged and gave it a tentative lick, then promptly twisted his face in repulsion. "Ew, this tastes like ass. The hell kinda flavor is this, anyway?" He took a moment to inspect the discarded wrapper. "_Dog shit_?" His eyes widened until Butters thought they might pop out of their sockets. "Okay, it's official, you gahs: God hates me. I probably just got AIDs - _again_, goddammit - from a dog shit-flavored Tootsie Pop. I think I now know what it feels like to be Kenny."

Butters blinked. "Holy smokes."

Wendy ground her teeth audibly. "You're not going to contract AIDs from a Tootsie Pop, Cartman. You'd know that if you had even half a brain."

"As an AIDs survivor, I take that as a personal affront, ho."

Bebe, who had wisely stayed silent throughout the conversation thus far, suddenly piped up. "Speaking of Kenny, I wonder if he's still available?"

"Why does it matter?" Wendy prodded.

Bebe examined her emerald-painted fingernails nonchalantly. "I've been single since summer ended and I need a man." Wendy opened her mouth but Bebe, having predicted this reaction, plowed on. "Hold onto that feminist, anti-male lecture for another day, Wendy. I was joking. Well, half-joking. I _am _pretty bored of being single."

"Well, go for it, then," Wendy said. "You're practically the female version of Kenny anyway, so it makes sense."

"God, no. Don't encourage them. They'd be the most annoying couple _ever_," Cartman declared with a snort as he leaned back in his chair. "All they'd do is hump and mack on each other and get cum all over the school. This is Colorado, not New Jersey. Have some fucking respect."

Butters felt his mouth grow dry and his stomach drop like a stone. Bebe and Kenny, together? The prospect made his insides twist in dread, mostly because he knew that Wendy had a point. Bebe and Kenny made sense, but him and Kenny… well, they _didn't_. They may be similar in appearance, but as far as personality went, they were almost complete opposites. Kenny was everything that he wasn't: cool, funny, confident, and outgoing. He loved Kenny for these traits and so many more, traits which contrasted sharply with his own, but what if Kenny didn't view them the same way? What if he would rather date someone he had more in common with? If Wendy, the smartest girl he knew, thought that Bebe and Kenny belonged together, then it would only be a matter of time before Kenny himself realized it and dumped Butters for her.

Butters had dropped his sucker on the floor and was now rubbing his knuckles together furiously. He would have to tap into the special reserves of confidence that he saved just for occasions like this. "Ah, a-actually, Bebe," he prefaced. Three pairs of curious eyes landed on him, with Cartman's narrowed knowingly. He gulped and averted his gaze, taking a deep, wobbly breath. "Kenny's datin' me now."

Cartman snickered quietly to himself and Wendy and Bebe exchanged a look. Bebe muttered something that sounded like "fuck my life" before shaking her frizzy blond head and turning back to her desk.

Wendy frowned at her best friend, then offered him a genuine smile. "That's great, Butters," she said warmly. "But I just have to ask… why Kenny?"

Butters couldn't help the gooey, mushy feeling that was spreading from the core of his being down to his tippy-toes. A better question would be why _not _Kenny? "Boy, there's… well, there's a whole lotta reasons," he said, chuckling a bit as his voice grew fond. "He always knows how to make me laugh, he's real smart - even though he doesn't think so, an' of course he's good-lookin', but I guess the most important thing is that he's always been so nice to me when everyone else was too busy bein' a jerk. Kenny's an amazing fella and an even better friend, a-an' I don't care that he's dirt-poor or that some folks think he's a filthy ol' slut, 'cause he's more than good enough for me." He glanced down at his lap, feeling a blush and a tender smile creeping onto his face. "I-I guess you could say I'm in love with him."

When Butters looked up again, he realized that the three other teenagers were regarding him with a mixture of disbelief and amazement. _…Maybe I shouldn'ta said all that, _he wondered a little too late, but he didn't really regret it. Every word had been completely true.

Cartman was the first one to break the silence. "Congratulations, Butters." He sniffed haughtily. "That is officially the faggiest thing I've heard since Justin Bieber's newest song."

Wendy punched him in the arm and glared. "Shut up, asshole." She turned once more to Butters, her expression softening. "I think that was really romantic."

Bebe, meanwhile, was half-slung over her desk, cradling her chin in her palm and watching Butters with slightly watery eyes. "Okay, I take back what I said earlier," she said with a lovesick sigh. "You can have Kenny if you keep saying things like that, because that was just so. Fucking. Adorable. Shit, now my mascara's running. Make-up emergency, Wendy!" Bebe leaned over to affectionately ruffle Butters' hair before standing up and prancing to the front of the room to grab a bathroom pass. Wendy rolled her eyes but followed her friend anyway, leaving Butters and Cartman to their own devices.

Cartman watched her exit longingly. After a few moments of staring at the door with a deep-set frown etched into his face, he realized that Butters was looking at him and schooled his expression into one of annoyance. "Were they on the rag, or what? Jesus Christ!" he wondered, scratching at his 'beard'.

Butters shook his head. "Nah, I don't think so, Eric. Girls just like all that emotional stuff."

Cartman thought about this for a moment. And then he thought some more. And then he smashed his pencil into the desk, making Butters flinch for the second time that hour. "Goddammit, why do the gay guys have to be so good with girls?" he complained. "I mean, come _on_. You don't even _like _pussy, but all you have to do is just open your mouth and chicks are creaming themselves. Hell, I could write the next great romance of the 21st century and they wouldn't even give me a second fucking glance! It's all wasted on fairies like you!"

At this point, they had attracted the attention of several classmates, but Cartman didn't seem to notice and if he did, he definitely didn't care. Butters leaned over the side of his chair to find the fallen Tootsie Pop, knowing that the 5 second rule no longer applied but not wanting to be a no-good litterer just because he couldn't finish eating it. "I-I think that's your problem, Eric. You sure as heck can't write the next great romance of the 21st century if you don't know nothin' about love," he advised as his fingers finally found the sucker.

"I _do _know about love, and it's a big, fat bitch," Cartman said stubbornly. "But they don't need to know I think that. All I need to do is figure out how to act like a ball-less pussy with a boner for romance, and I'm set."

Butters straightened himself up again, frowning at the debris that was clinging to his once-spotless sucker, and glanced at Cartman just in time to see that familiar scheming look cross his face.

"Eric," he warned. "You better not be comin' up with some sorta plan right now."

Too late. "Teach me how to act gay, Butters."

He blinked. "Correct me if I'm wrong - an' I probably am - but won't bein' gay kinda defeat the purpose of gettin' Wendy, a girl, to like you?" he posited.

"For fuck's sake, Butters, I don't want to _be_ a weird little fudgepacker like you, I just want to _act _like one 'cause Wendy likes guys with feelings and gay shit like that and -" He paused, his eyes widening and then narrowing traitorously. "I never said anything about that ho."

Butters allowed himself a little smirk at that. "You didn't have ta mention her. I could tell that's who you were talkin' about the whole time."

For once, Cartman was at a loss for words. "Whatever," he grumbled, and Butters took it as a small personal victory that he didn't argue the point any further. "So, back to the problem at hand: teach me in the ways of your gayness, Lord of the Fags." He gestured airily, as if urging his companion to do a backflip.

Butters chose to ignore the insult. "Bein' gay ain't just somethin' you learn, Eric. Why, I was born that way! A-an' it certainly ain't how you act. It's… well… it's a sexuality. I sure hope you already knew that, though."

"Okay, just ignore the whole part about gay guys liking dicks and focus on the personality aspect. That's what I'm aiming for."

Butters grew quiet, trying to dissect the real meaning of Cartman's words from amongst all the meaningless clutter. "…So you wanna learn how ta be nice?" he surmised. "Is that what you meant?"

"If it helps you sleep at night, Butters, then yes."

Butters ran a hand through his blonde hair, trying his best to look at all the possible positive outcomes of this situation. If, by the grace of God, he was able to make Cartman a little nicer, that would hopefully mean less time spent being the guinea pig for his friend's 'experiments'. And Cartman had actually been kind of nice back in 8th grade - before Wendy dumped him, that is.

The more he thought about it, the more novel the idea sounded. Most people would consider Cartman a lost cause, but Butters believed that there was good in everyone; Cartman's goodness was just a little harder to find… and yeah, okay, that was the understatement of the year, but darn it all if he wasn't going to stand by it!

"Alrighty, Eric," he finally conceded. "I think we can figure somethin' out. But what about Wendy a-an' Token? They're still together."

"Well, I'll break them up. Obviously."

Butters frowned. "That doesn't sound too nice ta me, Eric."

"Yeah, but it _is,_ though! As much as I hate that asshole Token, and as much as I luh-" He caught himself mid-sentence, then amended, "as much as I want to be with the hippie bitch, I'm not just doing it for personal gain. I'm doing it for her. Ergo, niceness. Honestly, Butters, do I need to draw up a chart for you or something?"

Butters breathed out in resignation. He would be much more opposed to this had Token not told him a couple days earlier of his tentative plan to break up with Wendy, so right now, it looked like the end of their relationship was inevitable anyway. "Well, okay then. But I ain't gonna help you break them up!" he said, trying to sound as forceful as possible.

Cartman beamed. "Oh, don't get your panties in a bunch, Butters. I can do that all by myself."

* * *

"Okay, so Huck is in the canoe and he gets separated from Jim and the raft… then what happens?"

"_The dirty Jew takes a pause from the reading to glance at his submissive butt buddy. Stan stares at him blankly because he's been too busy undressing said Jew with his eyes to have paid attention to the study session over the course of the last 5 minutes. Meanwhile, Kenny tries to cop a feel from Butters._"

"…Um. Doesn't he, like, I dunno… just paddle back to Jim?"

"_Kyle is highly disappointed at the incorrect answer. Stan is as well, because he is all too familiar with that look on Kyle's face, the look which almost guarantees he will not be getting any tonight_. _Butters is deeply confused, either due to not knowing the terminology behind 'cop a feel' or just not noticing Kenny's dirty little hands grabbing at his ass like it's the last waffle in a box of Eggo's._"

Kyle dramatically threw his frayed copy of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' to the wooden floor. "GODDAMMIT, CARTMAN, STOP NARRATING!" he roared.

Stan and Kyle were sitting next to each other on one side of Stan's treehouse, the former bearing an expression that was a strange mixture of horror and amusement, while the latter simmered and glared at the fat boy sitting on the (slightly sagging, due to the added weight) railing. Although both were filled with varying degrees of annoyance, the two blonds on the other side of the treehouse seemed to be enjoying themselves. Butters was smiling obliviously as he sat between Kenny's legs, his back pressed up against his boyfriend's chest, which was heaving with uproarious laughter.

Cartman grinned lazily and folded his hands over his ample stomach. "Don't be hating just 'cause I call 'em like I see 'em, Jew boy."

"How is it 'calling it like you see it' when _none _of the stuff you were rambling about was actually happening, fatass?" Kyle interrogated.

"Oh, but it _was _happening… in your minds," he said, tapping an index finger against his temple. "Just admit it, Kahl: you may be reading some crappy old book about a redneck asshole and his black slave companion, but in your mind, it is _you _who is making passionate gay love to Stan while floating on a raft down the Mississippi River. And in the end, that's what counts."

"…What?" Stan wondered intelligently.

"Huck and Jim never 'made love on the raft' because they weren't gay, artard!" Kyle spat, feeling his annoyance rapidly escalating to anger.

Cartman snorted. "Dude, they totally were."

"Really?" Butters asked with clear interest stamped on his face. He began leafing through the pages, presumably in search of the supposed gay subtext. Even Kenny opened up his book for the first time that study session. "Boy, I wonder what the AP English teachers would think if they knew those two fellers had a thing for each other!"

"Ooh, hey, listen to this," Kenny commented excitedly, pointing at one of the passages. "'And he would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was.' Haha! This is fuckin' rich!"

Kyle lightly batted away Gorak, who had climbed onto his shoulder and taken to chewing on the flaps of his ushanka, and gave Kenny a withering look. "Whose side are you on, anyway?" he demanded.

Kenny shrugged. "I tend to bounce between whoever amuses me the most. Right now, it just happens to be Cartman."

Cartman didn't say anything, just puffed up his chest and stared down his nose at Kyle in the most vainglorious manner possible. Kyle wanted to smack that supercilious look off his fat face, or better yet, rip off that pitiful excuse for a beard.

Before Kyle could launch into a scathing rhetoric filled with numerous insults related to weight and facial hair, he felt a warm hand resting on his thigh and looked up to see Stan watching him. Even without saying anything, he could read the message that was being telegrammed from those dark blue eyes: _Calm down, it's okay_. Just like that, the majority of the anger that had been bubbling up inside of him dissipated, leaving only a mild feeling of irritation in its wake. _Stan's magic touch, _he mused drily at this phenomenon.

The dark-haired teen smiled at the way Kyle's muscles relaxed beneath his fingertips and turned to Cartman. "Why are you here anyway, fatso? You're not even _in _our class," he reminded him.

"I'm not sure why I'm in this scene, actually. Comic relief?" Cartman guessed, placing his palms upward in a gesture of inane confusion. He then shoved them into the pockets of his coat and slid one leg over the other side of the railing. "But, whatever. I can tell when I'm no longer wanted-" _If you actually could, you wouldn't have come in the first place_, Kyle thought to himself, "-so I'll let you four gentlemen get back to your classic gay literature and be on my merry way. I know, I know, my presence will be missed dearly, but try not to cry too hard, okay?"

When all four pairs of eyes remained drier than the Kalahari, Cartman scowled darkly. "You guys are all boner-biting bastards," he complained, and with that, he jumped off the railing and landed in the shrubs, if the following scream of 'Ow, fucking bush!' was anything to go by.

"Be nice, Eric!" Butters called weakly after him. He didn't receive a response and the treehouse slipped into silence, as if all traces of conversation had left with Cartman.

"Thank God he's gone," Kyle muttered, reaching for his much-abused book. "How about we forget that ever happened and get back to reading?"

"Sounds good to me," Stan readily agreed.

And so they tried their damnedest to wipe the memory of Cartman from their minds and prepare for their upcoming test. Or, well, more like Stan and Kyle prepared while Butters played with Gorak and suckered Kenny into giving him a back rub.

Kenny poked his head over the shoulder he was kneading and jounced his eyebrows. "So…," he began casually. "I think it would be really fucking fun and hot if we all just, like, got naked and had a foursome."

Kyle felt his face burning red with embarrassment and mortification even as Stan's was beginning to turn a worrisome shade of green. "Kenny, god_dammit_!" he hissed, throwing his mitten-encased hands over his eyes to block out the sudden inflow of mental images. "Stan and I are _not _going to have a - a _foursome _with you and Butters!"

"Fuh-fuh-foursome?" Butters echoed, his eyes about twice their usual size and his face an even deeper shade of red than Kyle's hair, if that was possible. "Oh, geez, but my parents will ground me i-if I have deviant sex!"

Kenny laughed at the stricken expression on his friends' faces. "Oh, okay. Yeah, you guys probably have a pretty vanilla-ass sex life, huh?" He tapped his chin in contemplation. "Can't say I'm surprised. But hey, how about you guys get it on, and Butters and I watch? That's okay, right?"

"Oh, God," was all that Stan managed to choke out before he scrambled to the window and leaned halfway out to release a stream of vomit. And because things always seemed to be in the right place at the right time in South Park (or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you looked at it), the waterfall of puke landed directly on the head of recently-converted Goth Shelley Marsh, who shrieked "Gross, turd! I fucking HATE this family!" and ran inside to immortalize the event in the form of exaggeratedly dark poetry.

Kyle's mouth expanded in a gape while his nose wrinkled in disgust. "Aww, sick, dude!" he exclaimed as he crawled over to rub soothing circles into Stan's hunched back, because that was totally what two heterosexual best friends did for each other, right? "Now look what you've done, Kenny!"

The guilty blond waved his hands in front of him. "Jesus fucking Christ, you guys, I was _kidding_!" He shook his head, gave a disapproving cluck, and then looked at Butters with genuine remorse. "Sorry if I freaked you out, dude."

Butters' face had lost its tinge of crimson, but in its place was something that resembled a disappointed frown, and the fact that Butters might have actually been looking forward to a foursome creeped Kyle out _way_ more than anything Kenny had jokingly said. "Ah, that's okay, Ken. I shoulda known you were just bein' funny."

"Not… funny…" Stan moaned almost zombie-like as he tore himself away from the open window. He was still looking pretty pale as he wiped away the last traces of barf on his sleeve, but he forced a wobbly smile anyway. Kyle returned it, simply because Stan had one of those smiles that made everyone else around him smile too, although he couldn't help but feel a little offended. Was the thought of having sex with him really so puke-worthy? Was he really that unattractive? Or maybe Stan had only upchucked because Kenny and Butters would be involved too, and he actually didn't feel bile rising in his throat when he pictured him naked?

…Alright, he was officially over-thinking this.

Kenny shrugged, a knowing smirk plastered on the small part of his face not obstructed by his hood. "Damn, overreacting much? It's like that Shakespeare quote… 'methinks the Stan and Kyle doth protest too much', or something like that," he declared. Kyle, who was smarter than Stan and therefore knew damn well what Kenny was insinuating, glared sullenly. The object of his aggravation just smirked wider and whispered something in his boyfriend's ear that Kyle couldn't hear but incited musical laughter in Butters.

Stan set down 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and stretched, smacking his parched lips together a few times. "Hey, Butters, you think you can get us a few bottles of Sprite from the fridge? My mouth kinda tastes like stale barf and I need something to wash it down with."

"Yeah, sure, Stan!" Butters said at the exact same time that Kenny objected, "Why don't you get off your lazy ass and do it?"

The two blonds stared at each other incredulously for a few seconds, locked in a sort of surprised stalemate, which was broken by Butters. "Thanks for stickin' up for me, Kenny, but it's alright," he said, smiling gratefully. "I hafta use the bathroom anyway."

"Dude, Butters, you really don't have to if you don't want to," Stan said with a slight frown as Butters stood up. "Kenny's right, I'm just being lazy."

Butters rolled his shoulders noncommittally. "Like I said, I was gonna head back to the house anyway. No biggie." He turned and leaned down to kiss Kenny chastely on the lips. What started out as a quick goodbye peck quickly evolved into something more as Kenny surged upward and curled his fingers around the base of Butters' neck, holding him in place as he deepened the liplock. Kyle felt his eyebrows rise nearly to his hairline in astonishment at the fervent PDA. It almost looked like there was - okay, yeah, there was definitely some tongue action going on there, and Kenny's free hand was drifting dangerously low down Butters' back. His growing awkwardness forced him to look at Stan, who appeared similarly bewildered but didn't look like he was going to ralph again anytime soon, thank God.

After what felt like 1 hour but was actually only a minute, Kenny relinquished his grip on a very disoriented Butters. The smaller blond's lips, slightly swollen from the kissing, quirked in a smile so love-struck that Kyle could practically see the cartoon bubbly hearts coming off of him. He removed his hand from its place on Kenny's shoulder and stumbled down the ladder in a daze.

Kyle swiveled his head toward Kenny, who was watching Butters' departure with an introverted smile of his own. "What the hell was that?" he snapped when the sliding backdoor to Stan's house was shut.

Kenny blinked. Had he been so wrapped up in the kiss that he'd forgotten they were there? "A kiss," he replied smartly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Need me to call Butters back for another demonstration?"

"Um, the first one was enough," Stan interjected sheepishly.

Kenny's posture stiffened defensively, his eyes narrowing with suspicion as he repositioned himself against the wall. "What is this all about?" he asked, flicking his gaze between the two boys on the opposite side of the treehouse. "Do you guys have a problem with me and Butters, or do you just go around cockblocking every couple in sight?"

Stan took a sudden interest in a hole in his blue jeans, leaving Kyle to answer. The Jew sighed; Stan, ever the people-pleaser, had a tendency to bail out on situations like this. Well, that was okay. Kyle wasn't the type to sugarcoat things to save other peoples' opinion of him, and therefore was more suited to the job anyway. "I thought you didn't like Butters 'that way'," he began.

Kenny snorted. "I don't."

Kyle crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring the blond's stature. "Really?" He arched a disbelieving eyebrow.

"Yeah. He's just a good friend. A really, _really_ good friend who I happen to find pretty damn attractive, but that's it."

"Okay. So you had your tongue about halfway down Butters' throat and your hands practically on his ass because you only like him as a friend." An excessive amount of sarcasm was dripping from his voice, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. "That makes a hell of a lot of sense, Ken."

"Well, yeah. I'm playing the part of his boyfriend, so that kinda entails kissing him every now and then, right?"

"Yes, but…" Kyle trailed off, his forehead creasing as he tried to gather his thoughts. "Don't you feel like you're leading him on too much?"

The words were spoken softly, gently, but they ignited a fire in Kenny's eyes. "Hey, don't put the blame for this on me, buddy!" He was on his feet in a second, pointing an accusatory finger at the redhead. "_You're _the one who told me I needed to date him!"

"Right," Kyle agreed, "I know I did. But from where I'm standing, right now, it looks like you're taking advantage of Butters. You might not like him 'that way', but he_ loves _you. God, he's so in love with you, it's pathetic." Kenny averted his eyes at this. Deep down, there must be a part of him that knew it was true. His fingers toyed with the strings of his parka, cinched them - his own personal form of self-defense - as Kyle continued, "What happens if, in the heat of the moment, you blurt something out that you don't necessarily mean? Or heaven forbid, what if you actually have sex with him? How do you think he's going to react when he finds out it was just a pity fuck?"

His eyes, momentarily shadowed with guilt, refilled with a desperate anger. "So you think I'm not being fair. Then what the fuck _is _fair? Just half-assing it, letting Butters do all the work? Because that doesn't sound very fair to me. The least I can do is make this good for him. I owe him that. And besides, I'm not going to have sex with Butters unless he's absolutely sure that's what he wants. If it'll make him happy, then I'll do it." He slumped against the wall and slipped a hand under his hood to agitatedly tug at his sand-colored hair. "Christ, that's all I'm trying to do here."

Stan frowned sympathetically. He nodded at Kyle, who was at a loss for words, and drew himself up to his full height. "We know you're trying to make him happy, Kenny," he said quietly as he crossed the threshold to place a comforting hand on Kenny's shoulder. The skinnier boy glanced down at it fearfully, as if expecting his skin to burst into flames at the touch, but remained silent. "It's really nice of you. But just… be careful. What you're doing might make him happy right now, but if it gets too deep, he's only gonna hurt more when he finds out the truth."

Kenny bit his lip. Even from the other side of the room, Kyle could see the emotions playing across the visible part of his friend's face: anger, denial, regret, resignation, and then a newfound determination.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but immediately snapped it shut when a golden-blond head popped up over the edge of the ladder. "Hey Stan," Butters greeted, his voice muffled by the Sprite bottle he was holding between his teeth, "I saw your sister in the kitchen. She says that she's gonna - an' I quote - kick your little conformist ass, so maybe you should lie low for awhile." The tense atmosphere of the room finally registered with him and he frowned as he pulled himself the rest of the way up. "Did I do somethin' wrong?" he wondered, setting down the three green bottles of Sprite with trembling hands obviously itching to rub together. "If I did, then I'm awfully sorry. I don't want you guys to be sore at me or nothin'."

Kenny shook his shoulder to dislodge Stan's palm. "No, you didn't do anything wrong, Butters," he growled, glancing pointedly between Stan and Kyle. "Let's go."

Butters blinked, looking relieved that he hadn't done anything bad but also somewhat confused. If only he knew that they'd been arguing about him… "Well, okay, Kenny," he said with a haphazard smile. "Bye, fellas! See ya on Monday!"

Kyle sighed as he watched them go. _Maybe I shouldn't have forced him into this_, he thought, his shoulders drooping with regret. If Captain Hindsight were there, he would've told him that it was a failed idea from the start, and that they all could have saved themselves a shitload of grief had they just told Butters the truth. But it was too late now; the most they could do was hope that Kenny took their advice to heart.


	8. Nothing Came Out

**A/N: **Wow, got a lot of reviews for last chapter. Thanks! I really appreciated everything, whether it was just a 'good job' or concrit. This is the first multichaptered fic I've ever written, so pacing, subplots, etc. are things I don't have much (read: any) experience in. I'm trying, though.

Hope you guys enjoy this chapter. There's some Cartman angst at the end!

Oh, and some stuff about the future of the story: StanandKahl's subplot is a VERY minor thing that will only be alluded to every now and then, but the main focus of the story is Kenny/Butters, closely followed by CartmanxWendy, since Cartman is actually directly involved with the main plot (unlike Stan and Kyle). Oh, and the mystery surrounding Butters' therapy will be dealt with in the next chapter.

The title of this chapter is taken from the song "Nothing Came Out" by the Moldy Peaches. Very cute song. Actually, a lot of their songs remind me of Bunny. They even have one called "Little Bunny FooFoo", fer Chrissakes!

**Disclaimer: **South Park belongs to Matt and Trey.

**Chapter 7**

Normal American teenagers spent their weekends going to the movies or hanging out with their friends. Kenny McCormick, on the other hand, was spending his Saturday evening getting as shit-faced as possible with a bunch of people he didn't know.

The sun had set some time ago, leaving only a yellow half moon and the flames sputtering from an oil barrel they were using as a fire pit to illuminate the cluttered McCormick backyard. All in all there were about 20 faces gathered around the pit, some that Kenny recognized and some that he didn't, but every damn one of them were Kevin's friends so he supposed that was only to be expected.

He perched comfortably atop an overturned wheelbarrow that was located close enough to the fire pit to feel its heat but far enough to isolate himself from Kevin's friends and took a swig from his can of Bud Light, which was the only reason why he ever felt compelled to come to these parties. It sure as hell wasn't because of Kevin's cronies. They might have been kind of cool at one point in the distant past, but ever since that night they drove into town with a drunk and naked Kenny strapped to the hood of Kevin's Volvo, he'd considered them the lowest form of douchebags. In his opinion, the only things they were good for were non Anheuser-Busch drinks and the occasional broad, which they had failed to bring either of that night.

The last drop of Bud Light slithered down his throat and Kenny carelessly tossed it aside, almost hitting an approaching stranger. He glanced up to see a man in his early 20s shuffling toward him, his green sweater vest slightly askew, and assumed it must be one of the acquaintances Kevin had made during his short stay at South Park Community College. He silently decided to call him Pretentious Dickhole, because really, who wore a goddamn _sweater vest _to a kegger/bonfire?

Pretentious Dickhole stopped next to the wheelbarrow and raised a can of Michelob Ultra to his pursed lips. "Aren't you a little too young to be drinking, kid?" he wondered, rocking back and forth on the heels of his loafers.

"Aren't you a little too young to be wearing a sweater vest?" Kenny retorted.

The man chuckled appreciatively. "Touche. You're a feisty one, aren't you?"

Kenny hoped the darkness hid his expression of disgust. God, even the way this guy _talked_ was pretentious as fuck. "Yeah, you could say that." He kicked his legs against the wheelbarrow idly and nodded at the can of Michelob. "Got any more of those?"

"Hell no, I'm not going to be an enabler. You're, like, 10 years underage." His eyebrows furrowed and he took an extra indulgent sip, just to rub it in Kenny's face.

"Try 5 years," Kenny corrected. "And I've been drinking for about that long, so it's not like you're going to taint my beer virginity or some shit like that."

He reveled in the man's astonished gasp. "5 years? Damn." Pretentious Dickhole shook his head, as if this was a great tragedy, but walked back to the cooler and pulled out a 12 pack anyway. "You're going to die of alcohol poisoning, kid."

Kenny laughed bitterly as he grabbed a beer and cracked it open. "That would be a new one." He tilted his head back and chugged, once again taking a sort of sick pleasure in his companion's stupefaction. Shock value was Kenny McCormick's lifeblood.

"Trying to drown your sorrows? Sad. I don't approve of the way you're dealing with whatever's bothering you, but it's probably a normal reaction, considering the environment you were raised in."

The beer can made an ugly whining sound as his grip on it tightened. Who did this guy think he was to pry into his personal life? More than that, though, he was frustrated at his own transparency. The Pretentious Dickhole had hit the proverbial nail right on the head. He _was _trying to drown his sorrows, or more specifically, his conscience. Ever since that conversation in the treehouse with Stan and Kyle, he'd slept like shit and spent his waking hours growing more and more withdrawn. His Mom, who wouldn't bat an eye if he decided to go to school wearing lederhosen, was quick to point out that he was letting himself go and Karen, ever the creative one, drew a fairly accurate picture of him in her art class with crazy hair and red-rimmed eyes and got in trouble with the school because they thought it was 'promoting the usage of illegal drugs'. Kenny was willing to concede that he had gone a little awry in the last few days, but he thought that was a bit drastic. He didn't look _that _much like a stoner… did he?

His friends had noticed his change in behavior, too. Especially Butters. Although he never said anything about it, Kenny saw the way Butters would sometimes watch him silently when they were together, those penetrating blue eyes picking apart his brain. He felt naked and vulnerable when Butters did that, like he could see every little ugly part of him that he tried so hard to hide. He didn't like it.

The irony of the situation was that, even though he wanted to prove Stan and Kyle wrong, he was inadvertently following their advice. He had backed off from Butters and reverted to the way things had been during the first few days of their relationship. That meant no more closet make-out sessions, no more near-ass grabs. Maybe it was better that way. Now that he looked back on it, he realized that his behavior on the day of the 'Treehouse Incident' had been kind of ridiculous, fueled primarily by presumption and horniness rather than genuine affection. Yeah, it was true. He had been hornier than a two-dicked billy goat and took it out on the nearest person available. Butters didn't deserve to be taken advantage of. He didn't deserve to have his innocence tarnished by being dragged into a janitor's closet and used for the sole purpose of releasing some of Kenny's pent-up sexual frustration. No; Butters was a class act, and he deserved to be treated like one. _Slow and steady wins the race, McCormick, _he reminded himself.

As if on cue, the pocket of his pants began to vibrate and hum lowly. He pulled out his cell phone, blinked at the sudden brightness, and read the bold text on the screen: 'INCOMING CALL FROM BUTTERS STOTCH'. Pretentious Dickhole's eyebrows rose in interest as Kenny flipped open the phone and held it up to his ear.

"Kenny? Is that you?"

He couldn't resist, not with a question like that. "No, Butters, it's your mother."

A pause, and then a hesitant, "….Oh, geez, Mom? I-I'm sorry Mom, I meant ta call my good friend Kenny but I guess I pressed some wrong buttons and why does your voice sound so deep and-"

Kenny cut him off with a low chuckle. "Chill, dude. This is Kenny."

"Oh." He sounded relieved, and Kenny could practically picture him wiping the nonexistent sweat from his brow. "That's good."

With a wary glance at the sweater vest man, Kenny hopped off the wheelbarrow and walked toward the opposite end of the yard. "Is something wrong?" he asked when he was out of earshot.

"No," Butters replied slowly, the edge creeping back into his voice. "Why?"

Kenny shrugged, then felt a little stupid when he remembered that physical acknowledgments didn't exactly translate well over the phone. "Well, you just sounded kinda… scared… when you thought it was your Mom and not me," he vocalized.

There was a deep, long silence that seemed to stretch on for miles before Butters spoke up again in his usual chirpy voice. "I think it musta been your imagination, 'cause I'm feelin' great tonight, actually! My parents just ungrounded me, so I was callin' up to see if you're busy." He paused, then quickly added, "If you are, that's fine by me too. You're prob'ly off havin' loads of fun right now, huh?"

Kenny suppressed a sardonic laugh as he glanced back at the fire pit to see the Pretentious Dickhole procure a guitar and loudly announce his intentions to play some Neutral Milk Hotel, whatever that was. "Not really." He leaned against a broken-down dishwasher and gazed up at the night sky, half expecting the constellations to come together and spell out the answers for him. Life was kind of like the stars, he realized; neither really had any meaning or pattern until you started looking for one. "What were you planning?"

"Um," Butters hedged, "I'ah know this might sound kinda silly, but I was wonderin' if we could maybe go on a dinner date? That's somethin' normal couples do, right?"

Kenny swished the beer around in his can. "We aren't exactly 'normal', Butters," he reminded him gently. "And anyway, we could be more normal than Leave It to fuckin' Beaver and it still wouldn't change a damn thing because I don't have enough money to go out."

"Oh, but you wouldn't have to pay for nothin'!" Butters quickly interjected. "I have a heck-ton of allowance money saved up, so I'd be coverin' all the expenses."

He sighed and let the can slip from his fingers, not really feeling like drinking anymore. So much for getting shit-faced and drowning his conscience. Why was it growing increasingly difficult to say no to Butters? It was like the kid used Jedi mind tricks on him or something. "Shit, man. You'd be willing to do that?"

"Well, it'd be for a good cause."

A subconscious grin slipped onto Kenny's face. "I'm a good cause, eh?"

"The best gosh darn cause there is!" Butters reiterated jovially.

He felt a warm sensation spread throughout his chest and assumed it must be the last of the alcohol burning its way through his system. "Thanks. So, where are we going?"

"…Uh, I didn't get that far, actually," came Butters' admittance, followed by a self-effacing laugh. "I thought you woulda shot me down by now."

A cleft formed between Kenny's eyebrows as he considered this statement. It made him feel a little sad and ashamed that Butters had been expecting him to be a douche. He really didn't want to prove him right. "S'okay," he said, trying his best to sound couth. "We can figure it out later. How about I meet you at your house? You probably shouldn't come to mine. It's crawling with drunk-off-their-asses college dropouts, and I don't wanna have to bust out any Mysterion moves on them if they try to flirt with you."

Butters giggled appreciatively. "Okie dokie, Kenny. Meet me in… hm… 45 minutes? Would that work for you?"

"That would work great, actually. See you then."

"Bye!"

The line fell silent and Kenny couldn't help the small amount of happiness bubbling up inside of him as he pocketed his phone. He had only been on a couple dates before and, frankly, they had all sucked major ass, but he figured this time would be different because Butters wouldn't spend the entire time bitching about his problems like his previous dates had. Plus, he'd be eating something besides powdered milk and Pop Tarts for dinner, so that was always good.

Then his elation was dampened somewhat by the realization that nice clothes were usually expected on the first date. He glanced down at his outfit - a pair of Vans that he _thinks _used to be white but can't really tell due to its thick coating of dirt, baggy jeans, a hand-me-down Slayer shirt and, of course, his omnipresent hoodie - and couldn't help but wince. This definitely didn't fall under the category of 'nice clothing' but then again, did he even own anything nice?

He ran into the house to raid his closet but found nothing that was even remotely more passable than what he currently had on. For a few brief moments he stood there, staring at the meager contents of the wardrobe and waiting for it to magically fill with clothes from Banana Republic, when an idea cropped up in his mind. He pulled out his cell phone, scrolled through the contacts until he reached 'KYLE BROFLOVSKI', and gave a muffled laugh as he sent the text:

_hey sexy. what are you wearing?_

The reply came about 30 seconds later: _This is Kyle, not the phone sex hotline, Kenny. But if you really must know, I'm wearing tightey-whiteys and an argyle sweatshirt, so have fun with that… perv. _

Kenny grinned and pounded out another message. _ooh, so hot. but seriously: do you have any nice clothes i can borrow? butters and i are going out and all the stuff i own makes me look like a hobo._

This response took a little longer. _Yeah, come on over and we can pick something out for you. _

_

* * *

_Kenny checked himself for the sixth time in the side view mirror as he sat in the passenger's seat of Kyle's mini-van (actually Mrs. Broflovski's mini-van, but Kenny would forever refer to it as 'Kyle's mini-van' just because it pissed him off to be associated with something so domestic). In addition to the light orange Polo shirt and faded blue jeans he was currently sporting, his normally unruly hair now resembled what Kyle so gayly yet fittingly referred to as 'controlled chaos' through the help of some hair gel, and his overall appearance was infinitely more presentable. He didn't keep glancing at his reflection out of vanity, though; as dumb as it sounded, he had forgotten what he looked like when he actually put some time and thought into his appearance. Most days he just slipped out of bed, brushed his teeth, and then went to school wearing his parka and whatever other articles of clothing happened to be lying around his room. He wouldn't go so far as to say that he looked 'good', but he definitely looked different.

"God, you're like a bird with the way you keep preening yourself," Kyle commented, shooting him an amused sidelong glance as they turned onto the next street. "I'm not sure if it's fascinating or annoying."

"I'm pretty sure the emotion you're feeling right now is called 'jealousy', Kyle," Kenny supplied helpfully as he reclined the seat and propped his feet on the dashboard.

Kyle, who as it turned out had lied about the tighey-whiteys and argyle sweatshirt, snorted. "I'm not jealous. I never even wore that outfit." He took his eyes off the road for a second and predictably swatted at Kenny's legs. "Dude, feet off the dashboard. My Mom will throw a bitch fit if you get any dirt in here."

The blond sighed but dutifully put his legs down. "Forget about your Mom, _you'll _throw a bitch fit if I get any dirt in here. Admit it." Kyle just grunted in reply, and if he had been planning to say any more, it was cut off by a raspy bark from the back seat. Kenny chanced a look over his shoulder to notice for the first time that Stan and Kyle's creepy mutant thing was strapped up in a booster seat directly behind him. "God_damn_, Kyle, you and Stan are like the weirdest fucking couple I've ever met," he declared. "Seriously. Why the hell is it in the car? Are you planning on going to Babies 'R' Us and getting it some Little Einstein DVDs after you drop me off?"

Kyle's lanky fingers paled as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "We're _not _a fucking couple, okay, Kenny?" He regained control of his anger with a haughty sniff. "Stan and I are just in a temporary domestic partnership while we nurse Gorak back to full health." The car pulled into Butters' driveway and came to a grinding halt.

"And you don't find any of that gay?" Kenny asked flatly, one hand already on the door handle.

"Nope, not at all. Here, take some gum. I doubt Butters considers beer breath a turn-on."

Kenny wordlessly accepted the gum and rolled his eyes, then slung his parka over his shoulder and jumped out. "Stan says he wants another one!" he yelled as the mini-van began to back out. Kyle's only response was an obscene hand gesture and then he was driving away, going at least 10 miles over the speed limit.

He laughed and bounded up the steps of the Stotches' front porch, rapping his fist against the door when he remembered Butters telling him that the doorbell didn't work. There was an almost immediate explosion of footfalls from the other side as someone approached the foyer and a moment later the door was swinging open, reducing Kenny to blinking dumbly as he tried to ascertain if what he saw was real. Standing in the doorway, illuminated from behind by the warm glow of a living room, was Butters Stotch looking like he had never thought possible. He still definitely retained some of his boyish charm, but now he appeared to be much older and more mature, dressed in a striped tie, khaki pants, and a button-up blue shirt that matched his intelligent eyes.

"Damn," Kenny said succinctly, allowing his gaze to roam up and down every inch of Butters' formally clad body.

Butters looked adorably puzzled as his eyebrows drew together. "That's… that's a good reaction, right?"

Kenny grinned lecherously. "That's a _very _good reaction," he assured him. "But, one thing…" Before Butters could object, Kenny was reaching over and mussing his slightly slicked-back hair with one hand, the other one undoing the first two buttons on his shirt. The shorter blond blushed furiously as Kenny stepped back to examine his handiwork, palms resting atop Butters' sloping shoulders. He hummed to himself in satisfaction; he never thought he'd say this, but _damn, _Butters was actually kind of sort of really hot.

"You clean up good, Stotch," he said.

Butters' face lit up. "Well gosh, Kenny, you look mighty handsome yourself! I mean, you always looked good before, but…" His tongue darted out to traverse his lips in what was probably an unconscious gesture, but combined with the thinly-veiled desire flickering in his eyes, it was seductive enough to drive Kenny's hormones wild. _Dead kittens, naked Cartman, _he thought to himself in an attempt to get his emotions under control. "…I guess I'm tryin' to say that you look _really _great tonight."

Kenny laughed and rubbed the back of his head, suddenly feeling a bit self-conscious. "Yeah, well, you have Kyle to thank for that. Trust me, you wouldn't have wanted to go out with me had you seen what I looked like earlier today."

"Sure I would," Butters insisted. He grabbed a coat off the rack and pulled the door shut behind him as he stepped out into the cold December night. "Don't get me wrong, 'cause I love what you've got on - boy howdy, do I love it! - but you coulda shown up wearin' the same clothes you've been wearin' for the last 6 years and it wouldn't matter to me none. I'd still go out with you."

_Well, that information would've been a helluva lot more useful to me an hour ago_, he thought drily, but smiled when Butters' warm hand slipped into his. He gave it a light squeeze of acknowledgment as they walked wordlessly down the freshly-shoveled sidewalk in the direction of town. Butters was whistling a familiar tune under his breath and shooting backwards glances every few seconds, confusing Kenny with its secrecy until they rounded a corner, stopping to stand beneath the dead skeleton of a tree. The next thing he knew, Butters was tugging down the collar of his Polo shirt, and a moment later he felt a pair of soft lips pressing against his. As his hands settled on Butters' lower back, he realized that Butters had probably been waiting to kiss him until they were a safe distance from his parents' house.

His eyes had only begun to drift shut when the light pressure on his mouth disappeared. He ignored the small feeling of disappointment at the kiss's abrupt end and looked down at Butters, who was smacking his lips together contemplatively.

"What's wrong?" Kenny asked, more amused than offended. "You look like you've got peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth."

Butters ducked his head. "Ah, nothing. I-It's probably just my imagination."

"I'm not a _complete_ retard, Butters," Kenny informed him. He pivoted on his heel and dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans, trying to appear as aloof as possible. "If you really don't like kissing me that much, well, that's fine. We just won't kiss for the rest of the night."

This got the desired reaction out of Butters. "Oh, no, you don't have to go a-an' do _that_!" he exclaimed anxiously, and although Kenny had his back to him, he could tell he was fidgeting with his hands. "I just, I, um, well, uh, have you been drinkin' tonight by any chance?"

Kyle's words about 'beer breath' echoed in his mind as he turned to face Butters once more. "Yeah, I had a couple beers before you called." At Butters' apprehensive expression, he quickly appended, "Don't worry. I'm not drunk or anything, if that's what you're worried about." When Butters continued to look doubtful, he sighed, twisted his fingers around in his pockets until he found the stick of gum, then unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth. "I think I see what you're getting at. There. I'll be minty-fresh in no time!"

Butters returned his goofy grin and they resumed walking hand in hand. Kenny thought that the rest of their walk to town would be a little awkward, but one offhand comment about the stars got Butters on an eager tangent that lasted nearly the entire trip. He would nod, agree, and say the right things at the appropriate time, but for the most part, Butters' ramblings about constellations and the Greek mythos went in through one ear and out the other. What was more fascinating to him was Butters' ability to find something intensely interesting about almost anything. He had most certainly matured physically in the past few years - as Kenny could attest to tonight after the mindblowing epiphany that fuckin' Leopold "Butters" Stotch was actually really hot - but it was like he still looked at the world in the same way that a child would. Adults didn't dwell too much on the 'normal' things in life that they took for granted. On the other hand, 16 year old Butters had an almost expert way of picking the beautiful out of the mundane, like when he paused in the middle of his babbling about Orion to point out a small branch sagging under the weight of 5 large icicles. Butters was able to see something poetic in that. If Kenny had been the one to stumble upon it, he'd most likely either ignore it completely or rip it off the tree. He briefly pondered over what it was that had turned him so cynical when he remembered that, oh yeah, he had _always _been cynical.

They eventually reached the restaurant district of town and decided to head to Sizzler after reviewing Butters' modest bundle of cash and realizing that Bennigan's - Butters' personal choice - was just a little too pricey. Kenny didn't really care either way; he just wanted some goddamn food in his belly, _now._

The restaurant was about half-full when Butters and Kenny arrived and were escorted to a booth in the back of the building. Kenny slid into one end, Butters on the other, and scanned the room over the top of his menu. There were definitely some douchey-looking people here (although it should be noted that none of them were from New Jersey), and no one they actually knew in person. Good.

Kenny felt unusually relaxed and happy as he sat across from Butters, watching the boy complete a word search on the back of their-specially ordered kids' menu. Any of his past dates would have driven him half-insane by now. They'd bore him to death (sometimes literally) with trivial details of their life, flirt with him ad nauseum, and then drag him back to their place to have extremely awkward sex that they would never speak of again. Butters didn't do that. He was perfectly content to be himself, and Butters was just such a naturally easygoing person that it made Kenny want to be himself, too. Out of all the people that Kenny might have been forced to date, he really lucked out with such a great person as Butters.

"Hey, is that Wendy?"

Kenny's eyes snapped away from Butters as he followed his pointing finger. Sure enough, Wendy Testaburger was sitting in a booth by herself at the other end of the restaurant, trying to hide her forlornness by stabbing furiously at a bowl of salad.

"Kinda sad, ain't it?" Butters remarked as he used a straw to twirl around the ice cubes in his glass of lemonade. "She dressed up all pretty, prob'ly for Token, an' here she is sittin' all by her lonesome."

"Yeah," Kenny agreed, staring down at his own glass of Coke. He felt bad for Wendy, true, but he didn't really feel like focusing on other people's problems. He took a long sip, swallowed, and then looked up at Butters, remembering something he'd mentioned earlier. "Hey, what'd you get grounded for?"

"Hm?"

"You mentioned that your parents just ungrounded you. I didn't even know you were grounded in the first place."

"Oh." Butters blinked slowly. "Nothin' too big. I forgot ta take out the trash." His gaze focused intently on the menu and grew increasingly distant. "I need ta learn to behave myself," he murmured, picking up his red crayon to circle the word 'MISTAKE'.

_I need to learn to behave myself. _That phrase had been so permanently ingrained into Butters' mind by his parents that he rattled it off every time he did something 'wrong'. Could that be why Butters was seeing a therapist? Because of his parents? Kenny made a mental note to check into that more. It was a wonder that Butters had even the small amount of self-esteem he _did _possess with the way his parents constantly degraded him.

"Well, if it makes any difference, I think you behave better than anyone I know," Kenny stated, reaching across to comfortingly pat Butters' idle hand. Butters looked up, smiled at this, and opened his mouth to say something, but was brusquely cut off by the sound of Cartman's mechanized voice.

"_Butters, you black asshole, pick up the phone! This is an emergency, goddammit! I'm being SO seriously here!"_

Butters sighed and fumbled around under the table until he pulled out his cell phone, the source of the interruption.

"Your ringtone is Cartman yelling at you to pick up the phone?" Kenny asked with much amusement.

"Yep! It's kinda annoying sometimes, but hey, at least I never miss a call." He flashed Kenny a cheeky grin before placing the phone up against his ear. "Eric? …I-I'm listenin'… Where are ya at right now? …Sizzler? Gosh, that's awful convenient! So are we!"

Kenny froze. Cartman? _At Sizzler_? Images began to rush through his mind of the numerous scenarios in which this could go wrong: a poisoned plate of ribs, chili made out of someone's parents, roofies slipped into their drinks, being thrown into the meat locker… He waved his hands in front of Butters' face, frantically signaling him to stop.

Butters, of course, misinterpreted it. "Ah, I think Kenny wants ta say hi to you… you're standin' by the front door?" The two blonds' eyes moved simultaneously toward the entrance - Butters' with mild curiosity, Kenny's with trepidation - to see a newly-shaved Cartman leaning against the doorway and grinning at them devilishly. He gave them a sarcastic two-fingered salute and his mouth formed the outline of words as he talked into the phone.

"You, uh, want some more pointers on how ta act nice…? Yes, I know you said _gay, _but I'm sayin' _nice_… Well, fer starters, I think you should start callin' her by her real name… No, Eric, 'hippie bitch' ain't her real name, and you know that as well as I do!"

Kenny sighed and glanced down at his muddled reflection in the glass of Coke. It was going to be a long, long night.

* * *

Cartman took it as a good sign that Wendy's first words to him as he sat down in the seat opposite her were "What the hell are you doing here?" instead of "Get the fuck away from me, you fucking fatass!"

He took in her appearance - long, straight black hair tumbling over the top of a lavender v-neck, face not quite bereft of makeup - and smirked. "I'm here to cure cancer," he announced sarcastically, reaching for the nearest available menu. "What does it _look _like I'm doing, bitch? My Mom is too busy 'entertaining' some asshole at home to make me dinner, so I'm manning up and getting my own damn food."

Wendy drummed her slender fingers against the mahogany table. "You couldn't just make some at your own house?" she asked, her voice carrying an air of disapproval.

"Hell no. Why waste precious time and energy on making food when I can get someone else to do it for me? That's why slavery was such a good concept." His smirk widened at her indignant huff as he opened the menu to glance at its contents. He already knew what he wanted to order (their steak and portobellos were pretty much the greatest thing ever), but he thought it made him look much more sophisticated if he pondered over it for awhile. "Besides, I'm pumping money into the local economy. I'm, like, part of this huge grassroots effort. Isn't that _awesome_?"

Wendy sighed and rested her hand against her cheek. God, what he wouldn't give for that to be _his _hand touching her face... "Whatever, Cartman. Believe what you want to believe." Her eyes fluttered shut and it was like her whole body seemed to deflate, the usual flare leaving her body with a soft hiss.

Cartman blinked at the wholly uncharacteristic reaction to his words. This was not the Wendy Testaburger _he _knew, the one who had beat the shit out of him in 4th grade for ragging on tittie cancer, the one who had kicked him in the balls when she thought he was cheating on her. "Is something wrong?" he asked, feeling his eyebrows knit together even as Wendy's rose in curiosity. Shit, he'd just sounded concerned! "Not that I give a rat's ass either way," he added. "It just gives me the heeby-jeebies when you don't act like a crazy menopausal bitch 24/7."

"…Why am I letting you sit here, again?" Wendy wondered, her visage darkening slightly with annoyance. At least she didn't look so sad anymore.

Cartman rubbed his freshly-hairless chin and gave a very, very sexy grin (or at least, he hoped it was sexy). "My irresistible charm and undeniable sex appeal?" he guessed, tilting his head to the side coquettishly.

Wendy harrumphed and rolled her eyes. "God, no, not _that_."

He glared down at his lap, trying to ignore the way that stung. The worst part was that she had no idea how much her words hurt him. No, wait, the worst part was that he was too proud and too stubborn to just _tell_ her. "Well, fahn," he snapped, "Let's pretend for a moment that you aren't totally won over by my manly wiles. What else crawled up your ass and died?"

She said nothing, just speared a few croutons and pieces of lettuce on her fork and raised them to her mouth. This was her way of showing that she didn't want to talk about the subject any further. Cartman knew this, but he was a pusher - no, not _that _type of pusher, goddammit - and, therefore, would continue to press the issue. "It's Token, isn't it?" he said, leaning forward with all the excitement of a little kid interrogating its parents about Christmas presents. "Don't deny it, I know it is."

Wendy set down the fork and crossed her arms over her chest, looking appropriately conflicted. Her slitted eyes were bouncing from place to place, occasionally turning toward him, but then they would be gone again in a second while she continued to simmer quietly. Cartman imagined she was waging some epic battle in her mind over whether or not to trust him, and as badass as that mental image was, he _really _needed his side to win.

"Good evening and welcome to Sizzler!"

But of course, the waitress just _had _to show up right when he was going to say something super nice and swoon-worthy. Cartman didn't think he would ever find someone he wanted to beat the everliving shit out of more than Kyle but, well, here he was, picturing all the creative ways in which he could kill this lady he barely knew. Life was funny like that sometimes.

The waitress looked between them, wearing one of those fake smiles that were supposed to be inviting but in reality was just severely off-putting. "Oh, I see your date has finally arrived, sweetie," she commented, tugging at a few loose strands of blonde hair as she turned her too-bright grin on Wendy.

"He's _not _my date!" Wendy barked. Cartman grimaced. The waitress (Luann, if the bubbly letters on her name tag were to be believed) blinked like the stupid whore she was.

"Oh," she said, her Botox smile faltering briefly as she looked to Cartman for confirmation.

He straightened up in his seat, hid his disappointment behind a façade of pleasantry, and folded his hands to give them something else to do other than strangle her. "Wendy is an old friend who is very near and dear to my heart," he explained in that overly-saccharine voice he saved just for adults. Wendy scoffed, muttered something like "yeah, right," and he plowed on, "I was in the middle of saving a poor cat stuck in my Grandmother's tree - she's 86 and suffering from Alzheimer's, you know - when Ms. Testaburger called me up, bawling her eyes out, and told me what had happened." He shook his head with mock sadness. "She got stood up by her date tonight, and being as chivalrous as I am, I just couldn't let her spend the evening by herself. I mean, look at that face!" Wendy continued to look exasperated and uninspiring as he gestured at her. "_That's_ the face of a heartbroken young lady, Luann."

Luann placed one hand over her heart and sniffled. "Lord, that was beautiful. You two are _so _lucky to have each other," she said, sniffling once again as she pulled out a flipbook. "What would you like, sweetheart?"

"I'll have the steak and portobello with a medium Sprite to drink, please."

Once she had scampered away to the kitchen, Cartman turned to Wendy and flashed her a triumphant grin. "So, was I right?" he probed.

Wendy's cheek was once again being propped up by her hand. "About me being 'an old friend who is very near and dear to your heart'?" she quoted dully. "I assume you were lying about that part."

Cartman snorted and gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "No, that was complete bullshit. I meant the part where I described you as being heartbroken because Token stood you up like the ghetto asshole he is."

He saw the familiar tell-tale signs of anger building up in her: the dour puckering of her lips, her flaring nostrils, the way her fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt. "Yes, he stood me up." She had been looking away, but now her resentful stare was focused entirely on him. "He promised me that he would be here 45 minutes ago, he won't return any of my texts or calls, and now I look like a complete and total dumbass. Are you happy now?"

The overhead light illuminated the unshed tears in her eyes. Cartman didn't like it when people cried. He didn't know how to deal with it, so he didn't hold her gaze for very long. "No," he muttered honestly.

Wendy didn't say anything. He couldn't see her expression, but he assumed she was probably stunned to silence by his candidness. Good. He liked to know that there were still parts of him that could come off as unpredictable to people. It was part of his power.

After a few minutes of heavy silence, Cartman remembered Butters' advice about being nice, and that the best time to win a girl over is when they're emotionally vulnerable. Here was his golden opportunity! "Well, you see, Wendy," he prefaced, noting the way she seemed taken aback when he didn't use 'bitch', 'ho', or any of its variants, "Hm, how do I say this…? Token is what the French call 'un puto'."

"I'm pretty sure that's Spanish."

"Whatever. My point is: he's a no-good, douchebag, male prostitute sonofabitch that needs to be smacked around a bit until he learns his lesson. And by 'smacked around', I mean that someone needs to beat his ass to a pulp and then ground his parents into a spicy stew. And by 'someone', I mean me."

"Cartman, if you come close to doing _any _of that, I swear to God I'll-"

"GODDAMMIT, DON'T INTERRUPT ME WHEN I'M TRYING TO BE NICE!" Cartman howled, slamming his fists against the table and nearly knocking over the bowl of salad. "I'm offering to help you get back at your asshole boyfriend! That's the fucking _epitome_ of niceness! You should be kissing my feet and calling me Mother Teresa right now!"

"That's _not _being nice!" Wendy cried, shooting nervous glances around the restaurant. They were starting to make a scene.

"Yes, it is!" Cartman could feel himself getting frantic. He hid his shaking, clenched hands under the table and tried to stave off the desperate note creeping into his voice. "Why can't you see that?"

Anger and desolation were still pulsing through his veins, flushing his face with an angry reddish hue, while the defensiveness that had once filled Wendy was being replaced by a look of understanding. The corners of her lips pulled down into a frown and she suddenly looked very tired. "Eric, please don't start this," she pleaded quietly, massaging her temples.

He froze over with mortification. Already that familiar feeling of dejection was seeping into his stomach like some sort of insidious liquid. To hide this, he laughed. "Don't start what? My steak?" he said, gesticulating in the direction of their waitress, who was balancing his food and drink on a plate as she approached. "Yeah, right. I'm hungrier than a malnourished Ethiopian child, there's no way in hell I'm not gonna eat that. You can just dream on and go back to eating all your nasty organic shit."

She was unperturbed. "Don't be a smartass, you know what I meant. We're over, Cartman. We've been over since middle school ended. I've moved on; hell, the whole _world_ has moved on, and…" Her breath hitched, and for a split second, her impassive front wavered. "And you should, too."

The waitress was now standing at their table, placing his food and Sprite in front of him and saying words that Cartman couldn't hear. He couldn't hear _anything _over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. All of a sudden, it became too much for him: the wafting scent of steak, Wendy's eschewal, the voyeuristic stares of the other Sizzler patrons. "I gotta take a piss," he growled as he pushed himself out of the booth and stomped off toward the bathroom.

Once he was in there, he placed one chubby hand on either side of a sink to steady himself and glared at his reflection in the mirror. Jesus fucking Christ, did he look pitiful. His eyes were wild, twin orbs of fury sunken into a face that was beet red and closely resembled a tomato. He could feel the humiliating hot sting of tears pressing against his eyelids and that only made him feel worse. He wiped them on his sleeve and went back to holding the unwavering gaze of his reflection.

In his mind, he wasn't looking into the mirror of Sizzler's male bathroom. No. He was transported to the mirror of his own bathroom, the one he'd plowed his fist into on that fateful night in 8th grade, shattering the piece of furniture until it paralleled his life. The tears had flown freely that night, coming out in broken sobs and snorts as his mother rushed in to cradle his head and bleeding hand in her arms. That night was forever burned into his body in the form of the tiny pink scars that crisscrossed his knuckles, but even if he had somehow been left physically unscathed by the encounter, he doubted that his mind would ever let him forget it. He realized - not for the first time - that things would be so much easier if he could just be the unfeeling asshole that everyone thought he was.

His inner monologue was interrupted when the bathroom door swung open. He tensed, his muscles twitching with the fight-or-flight response at having been found in the middle of an emotionally raw moment, but he relaxed somewhat when he realized who it was.

"Hey," Kenny greeted casually, his familiar voice bouncing off the tiled walls.

Cartman ducked his head, turned on the faucet and began splashing water on his face to hide its blotchiness. "What's new, trailer trash? Did something happen to ruin yours and Butters' fagfest?" he inquired, hoping to God that there was someone as miserable as he was and that Kenny couldn't hear the wobbliness in his voice.

"Nope," Kenny denied as he strolled over to the paper towel dispenser next to Cartman's sink. "Butters accidentally spilled some lemonade in his lap, so I'm getting some stuff to wipe it up for him. It's kinda funny, actually, 'cause it looks like he pissed himself. Oh yeah, we heard you and Wendy bitching at each other. I'm guessing the whole 'act nice' thing didn't work out?"

"Fuck you, Kenny," Cartman replied swiftly, flicking some water at the boy standing beside him.

"My place or yours?"

"Neither, you sick fuck!"

"Ooh, edgy." Kenny grinned and pulled out a large wad of paper towel. "Alright, so you wanna keep it on the down-low. I can respect that. You know, there's a really nice, sexy rendezvous place on the other side of town where we can do this… I think it's called Anal Point?"

The blond chuckled, which turned into full-out laughter when Cartman showed him just how he felt with the use of one finger. Typical Kenny. He didn't like it when Kenny insinuated that he was some sort of assfucking homo, but in a way, he appreciated it. At least it took his mind off of Wendy for awhile. "Does Butters know you're soliciting gay sex in the bathroom?" he wondered as he turned off the faucet.

"No. Shhh, it can be our little secret." _Rrrrrip! _Another piece of brown paper towel, forcibly removed from its home by Kenny. "Okay, I'm serious now. How are you planning to sabotage my date?"

"…The fuck are you talking about?" Cartman demanded, feeling genuinely perplexed.

"The date I'm on with Butters. I figured you would've done something to fuck it up by now, since it's like your current life mission to ruin our lives."

Oh. That's right. He was supposed to be turning Butters and Kenny into hopeless sacks of shit, but he'd been too busy chasing after Wendy and making himself a hopeless sack of shit in the process. "Well, Kenneth," he began, "I regret to tell you that I do not have any life-ruining plans for you and the little queermo at the moment, but if you sit tight - heheh - I should have something ready for you by tomorrow."

"Gee, thanks," Kenny drawled sarcastically. "Well, this was just fan-fucking-tastic and all, but my boyfriend is sitting by himself with lemonade all over his crotch, so I should probably help him clean that up before it leaves a permanent stain."

Cartman grunted in farewell as Kenny walked out the door, a large bundle of paper towel in hand. He checked his appearance one last time, making sure that his face had returned to its normal color and that he wouldn't get the urge to cry like a little pussy again, then left the bathroom and his moment of weakness behind.

What he saw on the other side didn't surprise him, but that didn't make it feel any less painful. Token was now sitting in his seat, eating his steak and portobellos, drinking his medium Sprite, and worst of all: talking to _his _fucking woman. He made sure that his steps were extra loud and menacing as he approached the couple.

Token was laughing at something Wendy said, but when he locked eyes with Cartman, all traces of humor vanished from his face. "Hey, Cartman," he greeted nervously. "Hope you don't mind that I'm eating your food. There was a pretty bad traffic jam downtown, so that's why I was late. It was nice of you to keep Wendy company, though."

Cartman suppressed a bitter laugh. A traffic jam that made you an hour late for a date? Hell, a _traffic jam in South Park_? What a terrible excuse. He forced himself to smile. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't going to eat that, anyway. High levels of bullshit make me lose my appetite," he informed them politely as he shoved his hands in his pockets, turned away and walked toward the exit. "Oh, just so you know, the steak is raw and I spit in the Sprite. Enjoy the meal, fucker."

Token made a choking sound. He didn't want to know Wendy's reaction.


	9. Cheesy 80s Montage

**A/N: **Hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving enjoyed their break! I am very thankful for everyone who's taken the time to read this story and review it (special thanks goes out to hootpoop12, who I'm pretty sure has reviewed every single chapter so far, and Colorado Love, whose review basically made me laugh my ass off).

I apologize in advance for the anemic Kenny/Butters in this chapter, but rest assured, little fangirls, you will get your required dosage of Bunny fluff in the next one.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own South Park. I am just an adoring fan.

**Chapter 8**

"Leopold Stotch?"

The name pervaded the quiet atmosphere of the South Park Therapy Center's waiting room, momentarily attracting the attention of several occupants until they went back to their reading material. Only the gazes of Butters and Linda Stotch lingered on the source of the distraction: a big, bulbous head poking through the doorway, wearing a perfunctory smile on his wrinkled face. He sidestepped to reveal the rest of his disproportionately thin body and waved at the son and mother pair on the opposite end of the room. "You can come in now, Butters, mmkay."

Butters returned the smile, albeit a little more nervously, as he slid out of the purple chair. He liked Mr. Mackey; he was nice, friendly, and always offered him a wide assortment of mints (which of course was the factor that had won him over, not, you know, anything that actually reflected on his skills as a psychologist). Plus, he had known him since elementary school, so that made him easier to talk to than if he were just some stranger with a psychology degree.

Before he could walk over to join the school counselor-turned-therapist, he felt a hand clamp down on his lower arm. He froze in his tracks and half-turned to look at his mother upon feeling the blunted edge of fingernails digging into his coat sleeve.

"Remember what we talked about earlier, sweetie," she whispered. The hand that was gripping his arm gave a light squeeze, while her free hand was clutching a rolled-up _People_ magazine like she was going to use it to swat him with.

The conversation in question came rushing back to Butters' mind. _"Don't tell them about what happens at home, Butters,"_ his Dad had informed him seriously while pacing the length of the kitchen, his forehead marred by a tiny crease of distress. _"They'll get the wrong idea. You understand that, don't you?" _The truth was that Butters _didn't _understand it, even though he had nodded and sworn secrecy to his parents anyway. He knew they grounded him more often than other kids his age, but besides that, he didn't see what there was to get a 'wrong idea' about. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing spectacularly out of the ordinary with his home life.

"I-I got it, Mom," he whispered back. "I won't tell 'im nothin' about you or Dad." She relinquished her grip with a small nod of approval, allowing Butters to follow Mr. Mackey out of the cramped waiting room and into an equally confined office.

The room looked much different today than it would've a few years ago. Mackey had apparently kicked his hoarding habit sometime in the recent past and gone in the complete opposite direction to become a germophobe, as evidenced by the overpowering scent of Febreze, 5 bottles of hand sanitizer on the desk, and complete lack of dust motes to be found anywhere.

His visage lit up with unabashed excitement when he saw a new addition of furniture to the room: a black ergonomic chair next to the old staple chaise lounge. As Mr. Mackey closed the door behind them, Butters stepped forward and drew his index finger along the leather almost reverently.

"C'n I sit in the swivelly chair today, sir?" he asked hopefully.

The older man laughed, the kind of warm and lively laugh that Butters loved to hear from people. Kenny had a laugh like that, but his was more exuberant, more expressive. He had spent so many years communicating through monosyllabic replies, curse words and other mood-indicating sounds that Kenny could articulate his thoughts as well as any fully-functioning speaker just through these simple noises. "Sure, that would be mmkay," Mr. Mackey said. Butters grinned and eased himself into the seat, even giving a little contented sigh at the cushions' supreme comfort. He folded one leg under him and set the other one on the ground, using it to rotate the chair from side to side while he watched Mr. Mackey dig through the contents of a filing cabinet.

The therapist hummed disapprovingly after a few unsuccessful moments of searching. "Hm. That's odd," he muttered, wiping at his wire-rimmed glasses with the corner of his jacket.

"Is… is somethin' wrong?" Butters frowned.

"I seem to have lost your records, mmkay. Or someone broke in and stole them. Either way, it's pretty bad."

The frown deepened. "Oh? Well, uh, d'ya need me ta help you find it?" he offered, hands placed on either armrest in preparation to stand up.

Mr. Mackey just waved him off. "No, that's fine, mmkay. It'll turn up eventually. In the meantime…" He opened the drawer just below the one he had been scouring seconds earlier and began flipping through it until he found a blue sheet, which he pulled out with a flourish. "We'll be sort of restarting until I find your original records, mmkay. Is it all right if we go over some information we've covered before?"

Butters shrugged. He didn't necessarily feel like talking about certain things again, but he also realized that he didn't have much say in the matter. Come to think of it, he never had much say in _any _matters. It was something you got used to after awhile. "That's alright by me, sir. I-I mean, if it'll help you fix me…"

He received a sympathetic smile from Mr. Mackey as the man moved to the other side of the cherry oak desk and sat down in the chair directly across from him. "So. Let's start with a pretty standard beginning, mmkay?" he proposed, protracting the tip of a black ballpoint pen and holding it a few centimeters above the paper. "How have things been for you this past month? Has anything changed?"

Butters opened his mouth immediately, gushy details of his relationship with Kenny already on the tip of his tongue, but clamped it shut before he could come down with an extreme case of diarrhea of the mouth. Maybe he wasn't supposed to tell other people that they were dating. But what would be the fun in that? He knew that there were some people he just couldn't tell, at least not yet, but he thought it would be a shame to keep such a great feeling like love a secret. Heck, he wanted to shout it from the top of a mountain, but his parents had banned him from being within 30 feet of any rocky landforms after the time Cartman had dragged him to Aspen and casted him as the unwitting star of a Colorado-esque version of the "Blair Witch Project" that made Butters the center of media controversy for months. So Butters didn't have a mountain. What he _did _have, however, was a trustworthy therapist, one that he was supposed to tell everything to (with the exception of items relating exclusively to his parents, of course).

"Ah, well, there is _one_ thing, sir…" Butters began, trying to fight past the sudden dryness in his throat. He slouched a little lower in the chair and slid his hands beneath his thighs to prevent them from fidgeting. There was no reason for him to be nervous, really, he tried to reason with himself. It's not like he was talking about Mom or Dad. Still, he just really hoped that Mr. Mackey didn't turn out to be one of those mean homophobic types. He didn't know if he could handle that. "I-I got myself a boyfriend two an' a half weeks ago."

Mr. Mackey's eyebrows slowly inched their way up his forehead. "A boyfriend? Is that what you said, mmkay?" Butters nodded and he continued. "So, uh, does this mean you're gay?" Butters nodded again. He wasn't really sure what _else _that could mean. "Do your parents know that?"

He nodded vigorously a third time. "Oh yeah, they know, all right. I'd go so far as ta say they knew before I did," he admitted. "When I was 9, my Dad sent me to a Straight Camp 'cause he thought I was bi-curious. I didn't even know I was into fellers back then, but I guess he did! A-an' they both acted awful surprised when I tried datin' a girl in 7th grade." Butters shivered at the memory. His one and only 'real' girlfriend (Lexus didn't count) had also been an ex-Raisins girl, one that he hadn't been particularly interested in but dated anyway because Stan and Kyle told him it would get Eric off his ass. Metaphorically, of course. In particular he remembered the day she dragged him behind the bleachers at a football game, took her tank top off, and made out with him until his mouth was sore. Kenny had told him beforehand that stuff like that was supposed to turn him on, but throughout the whole 10-minute necking session Butters' wiener had remained soft and as useless as a book on how to read and overall he didn't think kissing girls was all that it was cracked up to be. It was this experience, combined with the realization that he would've found her much more attractive sans boobs, which led him to the conclusion that Cartman's years of vicious taunts relating to his sexuality were probably true. The whole relationship was one big, 5-month-long mess - prolonged as such because Butters didn't have the heart to dump her - but at least he had learned something about himself through it. "I'm not sure how, but they found out I was gay around… oh… a coupla months before high school first started. I-I didn't even come out to 'em or nothin', but I guess I'm just queerer than a three-dollar bill, huh?" he alleged with a tiny self-deprecating chuckle.

The parenthetical wrinkles which bordered Mackey's mouth deepened in contemplation. "Yeah, I see." He wrote something down on the blue piece of paper, the pen filling the air with loud scribbling sounds. The light pouring in through the slats of the Venetian blinds bounced off his glasses when he looked up again. "I don't have much experience with gay kids, mmkay, but I'll try to help. How did they react to this?"

"Better than I woulda expected, actually. I wasn't allowed to hang out or talk to any fellas that whole summer, so that wasn't much fun, an' they still won't let me go out with anybody in high school 'cause they think whoever I date will turn me into a no-good buttpiratin' sodomite, but I can't really complain," Butters said, rolling his shoulders in a light shrug. "At least they didn't kick me outta the house."

"Uh huh, that's always a good thing, mmkay," Mr. Mackey, ever the optimist, replied. He folded his comparatively tiny hands atop the desk and reclined in his wingback chair. "So your parents don't know that you're dating someone right now. Mmkay, that sounds pretty stressful to me. How does that make you feel, hiding things from your parents?"

Butters chewed on his lower lip. He wasn't sure how that made him feel, to be honest. The consequences of his 'secret affair' with Kenny hadn't crossed his mind very often. He had been too swept up in the pure exhilaration, the freedom, the happiness of this… this _thing _they shared to worry too much about the potential outcome if and when his parents found out. "Gee, I'm pretty stressed _now_," he decided, the urge to fidget with his hands finally taking over as panic swelled in his chest. "Oh, Jesus Mary and Joseph, they'll be real steamed at me when they find out!" How did he not think this through? Butters liked to consider himself extremely careful and obedient, if nothing else. He was the type of person who agonized for hours over what to wear, not because he actually cared about his appearance, but because he had a crippling fear of messing up and wearing the wrong outfit. How, then, did this same person who labored over the most trivial and ridiculous things rush headlong into a relationship without so much as thinking about the aftermath? The answer came to him suddenly in Cartman's voice, because the voice of a mentally unstable, Nazi-loving sociopath was his conscience, for some unknown reason: _You're in love, dumbass. That's how. _Butters had never loved anyone before Kenny, but he knew enough from books and movies and observation of others to know that sometimes people didn't exactly think straight when they fell in love.

He also knew that his parents would find out eventually. Not because he was psychic or particularly intuitive, but because he planned on telling them someday. Call him naïve, call him idealistic or even stupid, but if things went well, he hoped to stay with Kenny for a long time. Maybe even forever, if Kenny didn't mind. And if he was going to have a serious long-term relationship with Kenny - which he really hoped he was - then he would have to tell his parents, since he wanted them to remain in his life as well. His biggest concern now was how they would react to the revelation that he'd broke the rules by dating Kenny in high school.

Mr. Mackey remained inexplicably calm throughout Butters' emotional crisis and subsequent epiphany. "Yup, that's understandable, but don't worry about it too much. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, mmkay?" He pushed forward a bowl of peppermints. "Here, take some mints, mmkay, they're pretty good."

Butters reached in and gladly accepted a handful, placing one on his tongue and stuffing the rest in his coat pocket. The mint, combined with Mr. Mackey's advice, helped to temporarily abate some of his fears. "I think that's a good idea, sir," he conceded, "My old folks hopefully won't find out for a good while, but when they do… Gosh, I just hope they like Kenny even half as much as I do!" He thought back to the few times that Kenny had visited his house, back when they were nothing more than good friends, and even farther back to when they were simply acquaintances. To say these meetings had not gone smoothly was an understatement. For example, the one and only time he'd had Kenny over for Thanksgiving dinner, Kanye West had shown up and rudely interrupted them in the middle of the meal, eliciting a heated confrontation from Kenny who, in his own words, "just wanted to eat his own goddamn turkey in peace", and the details were kind of hazy after that but he _did _remember having to scrub blood off the walls later. Bad things happening to you was an occupational hazard of being close to Kenny, and although this was a stipulation that Butters had learned to 'roll with' over time, he doubted his parents would be as understanding. Especially with the first impression he had made on them. But Kenny was a great guy beneath that crass exterior, and he could definitely clean up good (this was concrete fact in Butters' mind after their date), so maybe hope wasn't lost after all.

It was Mr. Mackey's deep voice that broke him out of his inner monologue. "Uh, Kenny? As in, Kenny McCormick?" he parroted bemusedly.

Butters felt his cheeks grow slightly warm. "O-Oh. I didn't mean ta let his name slip like that," he said with a nervous laugh. "Whoops."

"I'm not gonna tell anyone, mmkay, this is all confidential. I just didn't expect that. Like, I really, _really_ didn't see that coming, mmkay."

"I-I didn't see it comin' either," Butters confessed honestly. "If someone woulda told me six years ago that me an' Kenny McCormick would end up bein' a couple, why, I'd probably think they were messin' with me or just plain crazy! But I didn't know him that well back then, an' I thought we were just too different - I mean, we're still pretty darn different, but maybe that's why we like each other so much. You know that phrase 'opposites attract', Mr. Mackey? Well, it got me thinkin' that maybe those differences are a good thing, a-an' maybe that's what's holdin' us together. Like glue. Or somethin'." He paused, thought about what he had just said, and sank lower in his chair. "That sounded a whole lot less stupid in my head."

"No, I didn't think that sounded stupid," Mr. Mackey remarked, "Just gay, mmkay."

Butters smiled. "Gee, thanks," he said, completely void of the sarcasm that usually accompanied this statement. Sounding gay was much better than sounding stupid, at least in his mind.

"You're welcome. Well, let's move on now, mmkay." Mr. Mackey scrawled down some more writing on the now half-filled blue paper, set down the pen, rubbed some Germ-X into his hands, and then picked up the pen again. "Why do you think you're here, Butters? I think that's important to know, mmkay, so I can figure out the best way to help you."

"I don't just _think_, sir, I _know_. My folks say the reason I'm such a… such a little fuck-up is 'cause there's somethin' wrong with my brain," he recited. "They think that's why I can't do nothin' right, an' you're s'posed ta fix it." His cheeks, which had been flushed with embarrassment moments earlier, were now tinted from shame. He never seemed to learn his lesson.

The therapist gave him another sympathetic frown. "Uh, sure, I'll see how I can… fix you, mmkay. Were those your parents' exact words?" Butters nodded. More writing. "Mmkay. So why do you think they say that? Calling you a 'fuck-up' doesn't sound very nice to me, mmkay."

"Prob'ly 'cause it's true. I can't even do the stuff that oughtta be easy; like last week, I was settin' the table for dinner an' I put the forks on the wrong side of the plates, an' my parents grounded me but I still messed up again a few days later. One mornin' my Dad had me run to the store 'cause he ran outta creamer for his coffee, an' he told me, 'Butters, make sure to get the vanilla caramel creamer,' but I went an' got the French vanilla instead. No matter how many times they ground me, I still end up messin' things up, an' normal people should learn from their mistakes. But I don't know how ta behave myself." He stopped and looked away, no longer able to hold Mackey's blank gaze, and realized that maybe he was talking too much about his parents. It was time to switch focus. "Plus, my friends get me ta do a whole lotta dumb stuff, too."

Mr. Mackey blinked. "Really? Like, uh, like what, mmkay?"

Butters began to rattle them off immediately. "Well, there was the time we were playin' with weapons an' Kenny threw a ninja star in my eye - yeah, I know what you're thinkin', but it was an accident an' he was real sorry 'bout it - so they dressed me up as a dog an' tried ta take me to the vet 'cause they didn't wanna get in trouble. Then there was the time they made me go on Maury Povich with balls on my chin; whoo, that one was crazy. An' another time, they made me dress up as a girl so I could sneak into a slumber party, an' now that I think about it, they've disguised me as a girl a whole buncha times… like when they told me I gotta pretend ta be Courtney Love -"

"Yeah, I get the point, mmkay," Mr. Mackey interrupted. "All that stuff sounds pretty bad to me, mmkay, really tough."

Butters shrugged. "Yeah, those were some hard times, all right," he agreed, "B-but ain't that kinda stuff normal for kids ta go through?"

There was a pregnant pause in which Mr. Mackey seemed to be deciding whether or not his patient was serious. "Um, no, I'm pretty sure none of that stuff is normal, mmkay," he said flatly after a few seconds.

"Oh." Butters blinked; this was all news to him. "Well, maybe those things don't happen in other parts of America, but strange stuff happens all the time to people in South Park. Y'know my boyfriend, Kenny McCormick? The one I told you about earlier?" Mr. Mackey nodded and Butters leaned in conspiratorially, lowering his voice to a whisper. "He can't die."

It was Mr. Mackey's turn to be shocked. "He… can't _die_?" he repeated, incredulous. "Is that what you said, mmkay?"

"Yup."

Mr. Mackey steepled his fingers beneath his chin and tilted his head to one side. "So, let me get this straight, mmkay," he prefaced slowly, "You think that Kenny is a strong person, either mentally or physically, so he seems invincible to you?"

Butters shook his head. "He's all those things too, but I-I meant it in a more literal way, sir." He began to tick off the reasons on his hand as they came to him. "Why, Kenny's been stabbed, decapitated, blown up, burnt to a crisp, an' those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head! He said that he used ta keep track of 'em in a journal when they first started happening, but he gave up when middle school rolled around 'cause he ran outta pages. I'm kinda glad I don't remember any of his deaths. They sound really disturbing, from what he's told me."

"'From what he's told you'?" Mackey echoed, looking even more confused now, if that was possible. "So you've never seen any of these supposed deaths actually happen?"

"He says that he dies in front of us all the time, but we never remember any of it," Butters explained. "How did he describe it… ah… 'a blessing and a curse', that's it." He shuddered, remembering the haunted look in Kenny's normally vivacious eyes when he told him about his numerous painful brushes with death. That was the hardest part about love, at least in his mind: seeing the one you love hurting and not being able to do a darn thing about it.

Mr. Mackey, meanwhile, was staring off into space, and Butters briefly considered waving his hand in front of his huge head to snap him out of it, but he ultimately decided against it. He appeared to be in deep thought, and besides, Butters didn't want to be rude or anything. After a few moments of this quiet rumination, Mr. Mackey let out a sigh and spoke. "Butters, I know this might be a little hard for you to process, mmkay, but have you ever given thought to the possibility that Kenny might be lying to you?"

Incomprehension flooded Butters' mind. The idea that Kenny would lie to him about _anything _was something that he had never even considered, and never _wanted _to consider. Butters trusted just about everyone (though he eventually developed a sort of weariness with Cartman), but Kenny had a tendency to be almost brutal with his honesty, so he trusted him more than anyone else. The image of Kenny's haunted, hollow eyes came back to him, and the more Butters thought about it, the surer he became. He sat up straighter in his chair and announced with a touch of defiance, "No, sir. It's not a lie. Kenny would _never_ lie to me."

* * *

Cartman's official 'grieving period' was over… or at least, it was supposed to be.

The 24 hours after that disastrous dinner at Sizzler lapsed in the form of an overly-sappy montage set to "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad" by Def Leppard. It started inconspicuously enough: he had been driving his Mom's car home, pushing 80 on the freeway and blasting heavy metal music to let his anger out, when Lars Ulrich's pissed-off howling was interrupted by the multilayered melodies of Def Leppard. Definitely _not _in the mood for a love song, he jammed a thick finger into the radio dial in an attempt to change the station, but it was useless. Before he knew it, he was out of his car and walking home in the rain (which didn't make sense because it was winter in Colorado). That was weird enough, but he started getting _really_ creeped-out when the scene changed and he found himself standing on a beach at sunset, holding a ring and dressed in a tuxedo like this was some sort of fucked-up Jared's commercial (and once again, it was _winter in Colorado_, why the hell was he at a beach?). The montage continued in a similarly dramatic fashion after that, with torturous shots of Wendy spliced between scenes of him being a total lovesick pussy, and he almost pulled a Kenny McCormick and shot himself in the head halfway through because _dammit_, he was cooler than this. If Eric Cartman was ever going to star in a cheesy 80s montage, it would be about his ascension to Dictator of the World, and it would be set to "You've Got Another Thing Coming" by Judas Priest. Way more badass than Def Leppard. (And yes, he fantasized over this scenario like some horny teen boys fantasized about fucking their favorite porn star)

When the montage ended, he assumed he would be back to his normal self. He figured that it had served as a catharsis, or in laymen's terms, "gotten the pussy out of his system". It hadn't. Horrified, he did all of the things he usually did to cheer himself up. He crashed and ruined hippie parties, burned down a synagogue, camped out on Kenny's front lawn and had a picnic all to himself, and even kidnapped Stan and Kyle's weird mutant pet and held it hostage until Kyle begrudgingly agreed to dress up in a maid outfit and serve him for an entire day. Doing these things filled him with twisted elation. For awhile, he was able to forget about Wendy. It wasn't until late at night, when he was lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, that he was unoccupied enough to think about her and the all-too familiar feeling of grief would expand in his chest like a balloon, growing larger and larger until it finally popped and left nothing but numbness in its wake. Then he would drift off into a restless sleep.

He didn't bring it up again at school, and neither did she. Over the years, they had fallen into rhythm with each other, developing a mutual philosophy of ignoring the problem until you either forgot about it or it disappeared of its own accord. They were perfect at pretending like nothing happened, perfect at hiding their true feelings behind barbed insults. Maybe that was their problem.

She didn't talk to him again until almost two weeks after their "dinner date". That morning, Cartman was scurrying around the school, a clunky Canon Powershot dangling from his neck and tapping out a beat on his broad chest as he searched for interesting subjects. Photography was his other elective besides German, chosen solely because it was a blow-off class for all intents and purposes. If you could take a picture of something, futz around with it in Photoshop for a bit, and come up with some BS meaning behind it, you could get an A in that class. Years of pasting Hitler mustaches onto pictures of Kyle had made Cartman an expert at Photoshop, and he was born a BSer so naturally he always passed with flying colors. He stopped outside of the cafeteria and took a picture of the brick wall, already coming up with a bogus presentation for it: "_This picture should come as a familiar sight to most students. It's one of the walls of our beloved lunchroom. The wall strikes a chord with me; does it mean anything to you? Yes? No? To me, the different shades of brown represent the varying shades of human skin tone. Sometimes the rows of bricks line up perfectly, but sometimes they don't. A reflection of race relations in modern-day America, perhaps?_"

He snickered at his own cleverness and thought about their current assignment. His teacher had instructed the class to take pictures of their fellow students that reflected South Park's diversity, or what little of it they had. Luckily for him, he had "connections". He was like a drug dealer, but instead of drugs, he handled minorities. Or something like that.

He turned into the adjacent hallway and found Stan and Kyle at their group's usual meeting place by the Fruitopia vending machine (the one that _used_ to be a Pepsi vending machine but was changed to something more health-conscious when Kyle's Mom threw a pissy fit about it). The two teenagers were talking in low whispers and standing a little too close for Cartman's comfort, so he announced his presence by clearing his throat loudly. They didn't notice. Dangerously near to being pissed off at their absorption in each other, Cartman marched forward, took his camera, and whacked both of them across the head with it.

"OW! Sonova_bitch_!" Kyle yelped, clutching his head and glaring mutinously at Cartman.

"Oh, don't be such a pussy," he sneered. "You probably couldn't even feel it through all that freaky Jew hair. Seriously, you need to get that shit cut. It looks like a fucking ginger tumor growing out of your skull, and frankly, it disgusts me."

"Goddamn, Cartman," Stan said, also tenderly rubbing the back of his head, "What the hell crawled up _your _ass and died today?"

"Wendy," Kyle supplied, his green eyes narrowed in a silent challenge. Cartman looked away. His fist clenched, making the pink scars on his knuckles turn white from the applied pressure.

Stan blinked. "Um, ew?"

"Well, I didn't mean she _literally_ crawled up his fat ass and died there…"

"Oh. Right."

Kyle shot Stan a concerned look and then they both turned to him, brows arched, awaiting a response.

"She's too busy humping Token like the dirty ho she is to even _look_ at my glorious ass," he explained, hoping he didn't sound as bitter as he felt. "And why the hell do I need a reason to be a dick? I've hated both of you limp-wristed pillowbiters with the red hot intensity of a thousand suns since the moment I had the displeasure of meeting you. Pimp smacking you with a camera for no reason is kind of what I _do_."

Stan shrugged. "He has a point," he said. Kyle frowned, unconvinced.

"Well, the feeling of hatred is mutual, but that doesn't make it any less annoying," he retorted. "And I don't think it's right for you to take out your anger on Stan and I. Maybe _you're _the one who needs therapy, not Butters."

Cartman masked his resentment at that behind an expression of innocent confusion. "Kahl, I see your mouth moving and I assume you're bitching me out right now, but all I hear is _wah wah wah_. It's like the adults in those shitty old _Peanuts _specials."

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah, like I believe _that_, fatass. You know damn well what I said, don't act like you didn't -" His bitching was cut off by a sudden flash of light as Cartman snapped a picture of Stan. "Aaaand now you're taking pictures of us because…?" he finished wonderingly.

"Photography assignment," Cartman clarified in a chipper tone, pressing down on the button again in time to catch Stan making a particularly attractive face… and by 'particularly attractive', he means 'particularly retarded'. It reeks of blackmail material. Or maybe that's just the smell of the crappy cafeteria food? "Oh, and I'm only taking pictures of the hippie fag because you're a daywalker and, as I'm sure you've noticed, that means your image won't show up on camera. I'm not going to waste precious film on your invisible schnozz."

"_Vampires _don't show up on camera! _I _do!" Kyle gestured to the picture of South Park High's basketball team hanging from a nearby wall, the one that had him front-row and center. "Okay, genius, if I don't show up in pictures, how do you explain _that_?"

Cartman frowned at the image of Kyle in his green basketball jersey, grinning back at him mockingly. He wasn't sure how to respond to that. So he wouldn't. "Hey, Stan," he said, cocking his head to one side, "Did a bunch of band geeks just walk by? I don't know about you, but all I'm hearing right now is the sound of trombones. _Bitchy _trombones, might I add."

"Alright, this is officially a waste of my time. I don't even like getting my picture taken," Kyle decided, tugging on Stan's shirtsleeve impatiently. "Let's go to homeroom."

"Yeah, sure," Stan replied, looking overwhelmed as Kyle began to lead him away. Poor guy.

"Good luck satisfying _that_, Stan," Cartman called after them. "You'll need a fucking bulldozer to get rid of all the sand in Kahl's vagina." When they didn't answer, Cartman remembered belatedly why he had approached them with a camera in the first place. He had to take pictures that represented diversity! Jews were diverse! He palmed his forehead in frustration and then cupped his mouth. "WAIT! Get your skinny Jewish ass back here right now, goddammit, I need pictures of minorities!"

They bounded up the steps to the second floor without so much as a backward glance. Cartman scoffed, adjusted his backpack, and continued walking down the hall. Fine. Let them be that way. There were probably dozens of greasy minorities in the school that would cream their panties at the opportunity to be photographed by an artistic genius such as himself.

He sauntered up to his locker and did the combination with one hand while the other one fumbled with the zipper of his backpack. In a moment that accurately represented how things typically went for him in life, the zipper had caught on the backpack's red material and refused to budge. "Fucker," he hissed under his breath, tugging on it irascibly until his backpack popped open, dumping out half its contents onto the floor. Among them was an all-but forgotten manila folder with the name 'LEOPOLD STOTCH' emblazoned on the front in black ink. He stared down at it blankly, wondering why the hell he had some big-ass folder about Butters in his backpack, when he remembered his scheme to hook him up with Kenny. Oh yeah. Well, he didn't need it anymore. The only important piece of information was Butters' diagnosis; everything else he already knew.

As he knelt on the ground to pick it up, he saw a familiar flash of disheveled blond hair walk by and straightened up so fast he almost smacked his head on the locker door. "Butters! Get over here!" he called. The boy in question turned in the middle of the hallway, glanced at a nearby digital clock, and then reluctantly trotted over.

"Howdy, Eric," he greeted, tugging agitatedly at the hem of his purple sweater. "How's it goin'?"

Cartman stood up. "Fucking peachy, thanks for asking," he drawled as he violently shoved books into his locker. "Wendy's a cunt, my photography homework is almost as gay as you, and if I hear Def Leppard one more time I'm going to punch a baby in the face."

"Well, I'm glad ta hear you're still doin' fine, what with all that bad stuff goin' on."

He rolled his eyes. Sometimes he forgot that Butters was basically retarded when it came to sarcasm. With a noncommittal grunt, he shoved the manila folder into his companion's hands, still not looking at him as he continued to stack textbooks in his locker.

There was silence while Butters inspected the folder, and then he spoke in a slightly wavering voice, "W-Where didja get this?"

Cartman froze, momentary panic seizing him. He couldn't tell him that he _stole _it, but then again, how else could he have had it in his possession? "Uh," he hedged, frantically looking around the hallway for something, _anything_ that would help him, "I found it. At McDonald's. In my Happy Meal." Dammit! Why did he have to look at the fat kid scarfing down a quarter pounder? Totally weak.

Butters blinked. "Does that happen a lot?" he inquired, nonplussed.

"Yes, yes it does," Cartman stated confidently. "You've never opened up your Happy Meal and found someone else's mental health records inside it? That worries me, Butters. You should talk to your gynecologist immediately."

"O-Oh. Okay." Butters looked down, scuffed his shoes against the tile floor, and then looked back up again, his eyebrows furrowed in curiosity. "How come you ain't makin' fun of me yet?"

Cartman sighed and turned away from his locker to face the shorter teen. "Butters, you're gay," he said slowly, seriously, as if everyone and their mother didn't already know this. "You still like Hello Kitty. You don't swear. You get manicures and pedicures. Your favorite movie is _The Notebook_. And did I mention you're the biggest goddamn queen I've ever met? If I somehow run out of insults relating to these things, then _maybe_ I'll start making fun of how fucked in the head you are. But I don't see that happening."

The next thing he knew, two arms were thrown around his neck and he was being pulled down into a hug, and all he could do was hold his arms out awkwardly like a penguin and watch, mortified, as fellow male students snickered at them. This was humiliating.

"Butters," he growled lowly, feeling the heat rising to his face, "If you don't stop touching me _right now_, I will rip off your arms and shove them so far up your ass you'll have to talk with your hands."

As predicted, Butters immediately let go and danced out of reach, his face crumpling in disgust. "Golly, that doesn't sound very good ta me," he said. "But I gotta say, that was still awful nice of you, not makin' fun of me for goin' ta therapy an' all."

Cartman rolled his eyes again. Only Butters would consider what he'd just said as a compliment, even though he'd basically listed all the reasons why he was the lamest person in the universe. "Yeah, well, you're still the biggest fucking gaywad I've ever met. And your sweater makes you look like an 80 year old virgin."

"That may be true, b-but at least I'm gettin' some," Butters retorted.

Cartman did a double take. "…Do you even know what that _means_?"

"No," Butters admitted honestly, "I just heard Kenny sayin' it."

"He would."

Butters nodded, a dreamy smile on his face, and sighed, "Yeah." Cartman frowned. He hoped he had never looked that stupidly lovestruck around Wendy. "I gotta hop to it now, Eric. Class should start real soon an' I wanna see Kenny first," Butters said, then added in a quieter tone, "I hope ya haven't given up on Wendy yet. She'll come around eventually. I just know it."

Cartman watched Butters disappear into the throngs of passersby, off to his own stable and seemingly happy relationship, and hoped with every ounce of his being that he was right. Part of him doubted it, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try as hard as possible to win her back. Eric Theodore Cartman would get what he wanted eventually. But for now, he was still moping.

He slammed his locker door shut and turned away. Butters might be a nerd that liked to arrive at class early, but he definitely wasn't. He used his impressive girth to push his way through the crowded hallway until he found himself in a quieter and less cramped wing of the school. Good. Maybe now he wouldn't have to talk to anyone.

Unfortunately for him, this turned out not to be the case. There were 5 other people in the hallway; 4 of them he didn't know at all, and one of them he knew all too well. She was standing at the far end, one hand clutching a white tote bag while the other one twisted in her long black hair. Sirens were blaring in his head at this point, yelling at him to get out before she noticed him, before he got sucked into conversation and the disappointment that would surely follow. He squared his shoulders and tried to make a noiseless exit.

"Cartman!"

The charade was up. Cartman halted, but kept his back to Wendy. Let _her _make the effort for once.

The sound of footsteps echoed throughout the hallway as she approached. "Ho," Cartman greeted with mock pleasantry, his gaze focused on the floor. "To what do I owe the great displeasure of your presence? Shouldn't you be blowing your teacher in exchange for a 4.0 or something?"

Even though he couldn't see her, he could sense the way she bristled, her hackles rising like a cat. He always thought that if Wendy was an animal, she would be a cat, a black one. They were his favorite. "No; that sounds like something _you _would do, though," she quipped. "I actually work hard to maintain my 4.0. There's no ass-kissing involved whatsoever."

"I was talking about dick-sucking, not ass-kissing. Get it right, bitch. Has all that weed smoke corrupted your hearing?"

"…That doesn't make sense!"

"_You _don't make sense!" he shot back maturely.

She sighed. He imagined she was massaging her temples. "Okay, this has to stop. I didn't come here to insult you."

"Oh?" he wondered, curious in spite of himself. "So you came to compliment me, then? _Now_ we're talking."

"Not quite. You're right about the talking part, though… and for the love of God, do you at least have the decency to turn around and face me? I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here."

"I have no decency," he declared proudly. "If you say 'pretty please with sugar on top, Big Daddy', then maybe, just _maybe_ I'll consider it."

She made an offended sound in the back of her throat. "Christ, no. I never said that when we were together, and I'm sure as hell not going to say it now. That's so demeaning."

He tapped his chin. "Really? You don't remember? Wendy, Wendy, Wendy… I'm disappointed. I guess I can't blame you though. Sometimes people forget what they say in the throes of passion." He stretched his arms above his head casually, looking at her for the first time with a wicked grin plastered on his face.

Her cheeks reddened ever so slightly. "That - that never happened," she sputtered, "And I'll let you know that I can't be held responsible for any physical damage that happens to your face if you don't turn around _right now_!"

Cartman continued to grin, but shuffled slowly until he was facing her. "That's more like it." He looked down at her, watched the way she glared up at him, knew that she knew he was right and that she hated it. She always hated it when he was right.

Wendy straightened and tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ear in an attempt to compose herself. "Well, anyway," she began, clearing her throat, and then she said the four words that no man ever wanted to hear strung together in that order: "We need to talk."

The wicked grin disappeared, leaving his face dark and guarded. He knew this could only end in more heartbreak for him, and it was almost enough to make him leave right then and there, but something held him to the spot. Maybe he was a masochist. "If you wanna talk about feelings and gay crap like that, either keep it to yourself or go to Stan and Butters. Emotional chicks give me a rash, but they fucking _live_ for that shit. It's like their hobby."

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Wow, that's good to know," she commented drily. "I'll make sure to warn you next time I have some Roseola-inducing feelings. But that's not what I came here for. I have a proposition for you, actually." She made a face as she said this, like admitting that she needed him for _anything _left a bad taste in her mouth.

Cartman quirked one intrigued eyebrow. "I'm listening," he said, adopting his businessman tone. Propositions and schemes he could deal with.

A conflicted look crossed Wendy's face and she glared off into the distance, hugging herself. Cartman sighed. Was it really so hard for her to just have a conversation with him? Annoyed, he snapped his fingers in front of her face a few times to bring her out of WendyLand. This did the trick. Her blue eyes came back to focus, narrowed in a glare, and then she smacked his larger hand away. "Fine, fine, I'm talking, alright? It's Token," she blurted out, then straightened slightly and smoothed down her shirt, taking on an equally businesslike voice. "And before you ask, no, I don't want you to kill him or get rid of the body. I have a hunch that he's not being completely honest with me, and I want you to find out what he's up to. No violence; just some much called-for snooping."

Cartman couldn't help but feel awash in giddy hope. Wendy was having problems with Token! This was the perfect opportunity for him to prove how much better he was! On the inside, he was dancing an Irish jig, but he remained unflappable on the outside. "Trouble in paradise, hm?" he guessed with a touch of smugness. "Can I at least get the juicy background details before I involve myself in your little Soap Opera?"

"The 'why's don't matter, Cartman," she said crisply. "And even if they did, I wouldn't trust you with them."

Cartman tried not to take that as an insult. He wouldn't trust himself either. "So, what, you're just too much of a lazy bitch to ask him what the fuck he's doing yourself, so now you're getting _me _to air out his dirty laundry? Do I _look _like Dr. Phil to you, ho?" He paused. "Wait, don't answer that."

"You might not understand this because you have the emotional complexity of a rock, but I don't want to offend Token. All I have right now is a hunch. That's it. I don't have any concrete evidence yet, and I don't want to accuse him of doing something wrong if it turns out I was completely off-base. I need that evidence. And as much as I hate to admit it, you're the only person qualified for the job."

He looked into her blue eyes, hard and steely on the surface, but Cartman was good at reading people. Wendy wasn't as confident as she appeared. She could talk a good game, that much was certain, but he could see through her façade. On the inside, this was eating her up. Wendy had always been the jealous girlfriend type, jumping to conclusions and then beating the shit out of you if those conclusions turned out to be correct - which Cartman could attest to - but this time, she didn't _want _to be right. She wouldn't glean any satisfaction from it. Cartman knew that if Wendy really wanted to, she could find out everything that she needed to know about Token by herself. She was every bit as conniving and manipulative as he was. It would be a piece of cake. But that was just it: she _didn't _want to, because she was afraid of what she might find. If Cartman turned up something bad about Token, then Wendy could always discount the evidence and write him off as being a dishonest, lovesick bastard. If _Wendy_ found the skeletons in Token's closet, no amount of lying would convince her otherwise. She trusted herself way too much.

Cartman pretended not to know this. "True, very true, I am pretty sweet. But what's in it for me? I'm not a dimestore detective, you know. I require payment for my services, preferably in the form of sexual favors, but cold hard cash will do too."

"I'm not a 5 cent hooker either, so the sexual favors are out," Wendy said, balancing her chin in her hand and chewing on the inside of her cheek. Apparently she hadn't worked out this part of the plan too well. "You know what? I'll figure something out later. But don't worry; I always hold up my end of the bargain, and I'll make sure it's worth your while."

Cartman bit back a moan and tried not to think of other, sexier times she had said that. "It better be," he grunted.

Her hand fell to her side and she looked at him with genuine surprise. "So… you're actually going to do this for me?" she asked.

"Yep, I guess so," he said, shrugging. Just then, the warning bell rang, signaling to the students that they had a minute to get to their classrooms before they were marked tardy.

When he looked at Wendy again, she was smiling faintly. "Thanks, Cartman. I really do appreciate it."

Cartman felt the corners of his lips twitch in response. "Just don't get used to it," he said. "I know you like to think I'm pussy whipped, but I'm no Token."

"No, you're not," she agreed, and Cartman wasn't sure whether he should treat that as an insult or a compliment. Evidently it wasn't an insult, because in the next moment one of her tiny warm hands reached up to cup his face, and he found himself leaning into it subconsciously, having waited for her touch for so long that he could whimper. He was surprised and a little ashamed that such a simple gesture made him weak in the knees, but he supposed that's what 4 long years could do to you.

His fantasy world came crashing down seconds later when she protracted her hand quickly, as if it had burned her, and she gave him one last apologetic look before she turned and darted away. He stayed rooted to the spot even after the bell rang and the hallway was empty of students. That familiar ache was still in the pit of his stomach, weighing him down, but there was something else in there, too: a sense of determination and hope. He was going to win Wendy back no matter what it took.


	10. Come What May

**A/N: **I honestly have no idea how I got a 9,000+ word chapter out in a week. There's only 2 reasonable explanations: I either have no life, or I just had a shit-ton of inspiration. I'd like to say it's the latter but the former probably has something to do with it, too. Just don't get used to it.

This chapter was going to be more humor/fluff-based, but the first part ended up being a big excuse for Cartmangst (Cartman + angst, yeah, I know, really clever). Still, I think I made well on my promise for Bunny fluff, and I had a lot of fun writing this chapter, so I hope you guys have fun reading it. Once again, thank you so much to everyone who continues to read and review. *showers with love*

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

**Chapter 9**

When Cartman got into character, he _really _got into character.

Most people who were paid to stalk someone would do so in their regular clothes, or whatever looked the most inconspicuous. Not Cartman. The day that Wendy told him he'd have to do some snooping around on Token, he went to the local thrift store, bought a beige trench coat, a fedora, and a similar outfit for Butters, who was to be the Watson to his Holmes. Of course, Butters had to do a bit of pissing and moaning before he finally agreed to it. The conversation went a little something like this:

"Sure I'll do it, Eric. I just don't understand why I gotta be Watson. That don't sound too fair, 'specially since you didn't even bother askin' me who I wanted ta be."

"That's because Watson is Holmes' man-bitch, Butters, just like you're _my_ man-bitch. It's a basic fact of life, like death or how M. Night Shyamalan will never make another good movie. Do you have your costume on?"

"I-I'm workin' on it, mister, you just be patient. Oh, wait, I got another question: How come I hafta wear a dress underneath my coat?"

"Because you're going to be Token's sexy temptress, goddammit! We've already been through this a thousand times! Just do it!"

And then he hung up.

When they met an hour later outside the Black Mansion, Butters was indeed wearing his trench coat with the red cocktail dress underneath it, plus his Marjorine wig (pulled back and crammed under the fedora for now) and a pair of 3-inch high heels, which he complained about literally _every single time _they had to follow Token on foot.

"Eric, I don't wanna wear high heels no more!" he would whine. "I don't know how ta walk in 'em an' I keep trippin' on everything a-an' I think it's just slowin' us down-"

"Butters, if you bitch about your pussy little feet one more time, I will take off those heels _for_ you and use them to carve out your tongue."

Butters didn't complain about his feet for the rest of the day.

Token, meanwhile, turned out to be a spectacularly uninteresting person. He woke up in the morning, had breakfast prepared for him by his maid, watched ESPN on his 100-inch TV screen until noon, and then went to the mall to spend copious amounts of cash on things that he probably owned one or two of already. The way he whored out his money was fascinating, but everything else about him was decidedly not scandalous, every moment of his life like a scene from some ghetto Disney movie. So far, they had found nothing that would suggest a super-secret double life or any dishonesty on Token's part. Cartman found this to be extremely disappointing, not to mention worrisome.

But hope was not lost. There was still Plan B, otherwise known as "The Monica Lewinsky Plan", or "This Plan Will Not Fail, I'm So Seriously, Butters".

He enforced this around 6 PM, when the two boys were perched among the branches of one of Token's giant steroidal European-imported trees, watching the party going on inside of the house through Cartman's Wellington Bear binoculars.

"Butters, you have to go in there," he announced, the whiskers of his fake mustache twitching.

Butters almost fell off the branch. "Why?"

"Because teenage parties are cesspools of drugs and sex and debauchery, and if Token's looking for a hot piece of ass to cheat on Wendy with, he's going to find it there," he explained.

The monocle slid off of Butters' face and plummeted to the ground below as he shook his head vigorously. "Nuh-uh, I ain't goin' in there, no way, no how," he insisted, waving his hands in a gesture universally recognized as meaning 'no thanks'. "There's so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where ta start. First of all, the whole basketball team is in there, an' that includes Kyle. He'll know it's me for sure, if everyone else is too dumb ta figure it out. Second of all, Token's my friend, an' I _really _don't want him hittin' on me. A-an' third of all, even if I did, I got a boyfriend! You can't make me cheat on Kenny, Eric! You just can't!"

"Watch me," Cartman spat, ripping off Butters' coat and fedora so that the neatly-coiffed blond curls tumbled down. "If it'll make you stop being such a Melvin about this, I won't tell Kenny. Not that he would care. He'd probably get off on it, actually. And you don't have to worry about Jewboy being there, since he's too much of an ass-pounding loser to get invited to social gatherings."

Butters sighed. "Well, alrighty then, I s'pose I'll do it." He reluctantly climbed down the tree, an act that should've taken 2 minutes, tops, but took 5 times as long because his heels kept slipping on the branches. Once he was at the bottom, he smoothed out his dress and shuffled toward the mansion like a lamb approaching the slaughterhouse.

"Wait, I have some really super important stuff to tell you!" Cartman called down.

Butters stopped. "Oh, Jesus."

"Your name is Olive Oil. You like puppies, Michael Bublé, and long walks on the beach. If anyone tries to get you in the bathroom so you can suck their sweaty meathead cock, don't do it! Unless it's Token's sweaty meathead cock, in which case: _for the love of God, suck him dry_! Oh, and make sure to get pictures of you doing the deed, too."

He could see Butters' face turn red in the warm light emanating from the house. "I ain't suckin' _any _wieners!" he yelled. "An' how would I get pictures of it, anyway? I don't got a camera."

"You've got a cell phone, right? There should be a camera in that."

"But I don't know how it works!" Butters wailed.

Cartman stomped down on the urge to slam his head repeatedly against the tree trunk. It was hard, but he was the brains of the operation, so he had to keep his mental capacity intact if he wanted this to go smoothly. "Then figure it out!" he hissed, hoping that the party music was loud enough to drown out their shouting match. "Did your crazy-ass Mom drop you on the head recently? You've been acting more retarded than usual."

"…no…"

"That's very comforting, Butters. Now scram! And don't walk like that, it makes you look like you have a 4-month old tampon shoved up your vag." He paused. "Wait, yeah, use that as an excuse if someone other than Token tries to get in your pants. They'll take one look at you and go 'Oh, hell naw'."

Butters gave him one last wave of acknowledgment before he disappeared into the Black residence. Cartman snorted and settled himself more comfortably in the crook of the branch, then raised the binoculars to his eyes. There was a lot riding on what happened tonight. If he could prove that Token was a cheating bastard, Wendy would dump his black ass and she would be available again. It didn't even matter if she found out that Olive Oil was Butters in disguise, because the principle was still the same: if presented with the opportunity, Token would cheat on her. But he was getting ahead of himself. Nothing had even happened yet. There was a possibility that Token wouldn't find Butters dressed as a girl boneable, even though it was a possibility that Cartman really didn't want to consider.

He focused his attention back to what was currently happening in the party. There appeared to be anywhere from 20 to 30 people on the main floor of the house, but that didn't mean there weren't more of them hiding in other parts, dry humping on IKEA couches or getting high in lavishly-decorated guest rooms. Cartman watched the partygoers mingling with undisguised abhorrence as he tried to keep track of them: Craig and Clyde, playing beer pong; Damien, swinging from a chandelier; Sally Darson (the resident school prostitute since 4th grade), dancing provocatively on the pool table; and Tweek, cowering under said table with a lampshade on his head. Token, meanwhile, was standing in the middle of it all, looking harried and incredibly underwhelmed by the bevy of skanky girls surrounding him.

"Dammit, Token, stop being such a boring asswipe and bang a chick," Cartman grumbled, tugging the fedora down over his pink-tinged ears as a frigid gust of wind whistled through the branches. On the upside, at least Kyle had yet to rear his ugly ginger head, which meant that he had one less thing to worry about going wrong tonight. On the downside, Butters' girly mug was nowhere to be seen either.

A flash of scarlet caught his eye and he pointed his binoculars in its direction just in time to see Butters, aka Olive Oil, descending the stairs into the main atrium of the party. It was about damn time. The crossdressing boy took in the scene of the party with an expression of mangled horror on his face, then shook his head as if to clear it and drifted toward the snack bar in a less-populous part of the room, walking right past Token on his way there. Cartman blinked once. He blinked again. By the third blink, he still couldn't believe if what he just saw had actually happened.

With a smothered sound of rage, he turned on his Bluetooth headset and roared, "SLUTTERS! WHAT THE FUCK?"

Through the Palladian window, Cartman saw the punch spew forth from Butters' mouth in a waterfall. "Holy bejesus, Eric!" his high-pitched voice came bursting through the headset. "What the heck is wrong?"

"Why are you stuffing your face like a pregnant bitch when you _should_ be seducing Token with your undeniable feminine charm?" he demanded.

Butters grabbed a handful of napkins and hurriedly mopped up the small puddle of red punch. "I was gonna get to that after I had somethin' ta eat, on account of I never ate today."

"We were at McDonald's, like, 2 hours ago! I even gave you some of my French fries because I'm such a good person!"

"Oh, c'mon, it was only _one_ French fry, an' you only gave it ta me 'cause it was all soggy an' you didn't wanna eat it!"

Cartman sighed and lowered the binoculars so he could rub the crinkled bridge of his nose. Sometimes he wished he had people besides Butters to boss around, because even though he was obedient and could be suckered into doing pretty much anything, it was moments like this that almost outweighed the positive aspects of his presence. Almost, but not quite. "Look, Slutters-"

"Why d'ya keep callin' me that?"

"Because it's your code name and it's a clever pun, that's why."

"I-I thought my name was, ah, Olive Oil or somethin'."

"No, ass master, Olive Oil is your _alias_. Slutters is your code name, because that's what you're supposed to be tonight: a slut. Now go out there and catch a case of jungle fever, you raging whore!"

The line disconnected abruptly and Cartman harrumphed, drawing his knees up to his chest to block out the cold. He wasn't sure if Butters knew what jungle fever meant - knowing him, he'd take it literally and try to contract a virus from Africa or something of a similarly ridiculous nature - but as long as he got Token to engage in sin with him by the end of the night, it didn't matter what convoluted path he took to get there.

Tires squelched against slush as cars pulled onto the side of the road, bringing even more guests to the party. Cartman gave a haughty sniff. _He _was never invited to any of these get-togethers. They were probably just afraid that their crappy little shindigs wouldn't be able to handle his supreme awesomeness. But deep down, he knew that wasn't the truth. The real reason why he was rarely invited to parties was because he was too much of an ass. Plain and simple. He liked to brag that he'd been an asshole since the night of his conception, and while this was certainly true, at least he was a somewhat _fun _asshole when he was a kid. His rudeness had been infused with just enough magnetism to keep people interested back then. Now he was just a twisted, hostile, bitter teen, and no one liked that. Cartman didn't like that, so he didn't blame his classmates. But could they blame _him_ either? People were a result of the experiences they went through, and he was no exception. He had every right to be bitter.

This train of thought effectively sidetracked him for a few minutes, and by the time he shook off his introspective musings and peered through the binoculars again, he couldn't find Butters _or _Token among the sudden influx of newcomers, who were now clustering together and dancing to bass-heavy music that made the tree quiver. He hoped this meant they were in the process of hooking up in a different room.

The sound of a door shutting cut through the relative silence of the night, directing Cartman's attention away from the window. He glanced down to see Butters trudging toward him through the snow with the blond Marjorine wig dangling from one hand and a look of utter defeat on his face. Already feeling the apprehension boiling inside of him, Cartman scrambled down the tree furiously and met the boy halfway through the yard.

"Butters, you sad sack of shit," he cried, grabbing a hold of Butters' thin shoulders and shaking him, "What happened?"

"Wuh-well, it was goin' all fine an' dandy until Clyde came up ta me, an' he was actin' really weird so I tried ignorin' him, but that didn't work, an' then he started grabbin' my chest an' he looked real steamed when he realized I don't have titties," Butters gasped out, wiping his mascara-smeared eyes on the back of his wrist. "S-So I left before he could figure out who I was."

"So… you left. Just like that," Cartman deadpanned.

"Jus' like that."

He ran both rimy palms down his face. God, no, this couldn't be happening. "Jesus Christ. What happened with Token?" he wondered through gritted teeth. "Anything? Or was getting felt up by Clyde just _so totally awesome _that you forgot about what you were _supposed _to do in the first place?"

Butters frowned and looked back in the direction of the house, which was still pulsating rhythmically. "Uh, I started talkin' ta him, an' I'unno if he liked me or not but I never got ta find out 'cause Clyde came up an' said somethin' about a-a party in his pants, an' Token left ta go talk with someone else. I was gonna go find him again but Clyde was awful clingy, so I didn't get a chance." He gnawed on his lower lip, now chapped from the winter air, and looked down. "I-I'm sorry for messin' up again, Eric."

Cartman tried to take deep, calming breaths. _Don't freak out_. "Okay, so Token didn't have the hots for you. Whatever. Did he have the hots for anyone else?"

"Ah, not that I saw, no. He was mostly talkin' ta fellers from the basketball team."

Cartman let his hands slowly fall down to his sides, where they balled into fists, and then turned away from Butters. He didn't even bother to hide his frustration. The breath came out of his nose in quick, harsh pants as he closed his eyes and drove his foot through a snow bank, sending the white powdery substance soaring through the air. "Fuck!" he yelled, the rawness of his voice distorting the word until it sounded more like a primeval grunt than anything distinctively human. Failure. Failure. How many more times did he have to go through this? With another strangled sound that might've been a curse word, he ripped off the fake mustache and hurled it at the Blacks' withered topiaries. _Token's _stupid-ass topiaries. How come Token had to be so damn perfect, so much better than him? What did he have that kept Wendy at his side?

"Eric…"

Cartman spun around to face the source of the noise, his coattails flying. Butters was slightly hunched over, his features mostly indistinguishable in the dark, but he could clearly envision the pity and sympathy on Butters' face like he was looking at it in the full light of day. The snow made a muffled crunching sound as Butters took a few hesitant steps forward, then halted again. "This really means a lot to you, don't it? Gettin' Wendy back?" he guessed, wringing his hands and bunching them in the silk material of his dress. "I know that you need Token outta the picture for that ta happen, an' I know you think this is the only way ta do that, but… maybe it'll just happen on its own? If God wants you an' Wendy to be together, then by golly, it'll happen. A-An' I personally think it's gonna. You've tried too hard for it _not_ to happen."

Cartman sniffed, telling himself that his runny nose was a result of the weather and not a sign of emotional instability on his part. "You're so full of shit, Butters," he jeered, though it lacked heat.

"No, I ain't. I'm full of the truth, that's what. Maybe you should just give it more time."

He laughed harshly. "'Maybe you should just give it more time,'" he mimicked in a falsetto, drawing out the diphthong in exaggerated imitation of Butters' hick accent. "Where the hell have _you _been for the last 4 years? If time was cash, I'd be fucking rich. I don't need any more time. What I need is for Wendy to dump that black asshole and love me back."

"I've been right by your side for the last 4 years, Eric. Longer than that. Now, I-I know you prob'ly don't like me all that much-"

"I hate you," Cartman agreed smoothly.

"-But I care about _you_ an awful lot, an' it just tears me right up, watchin' you beat up yourself over this for so long. The way I see it, you have a coupla options here: you either get over Wendy-"

"Tried that, failed miserably."

"Point taken. Anyway, you can try that again, _or_ you can give it some more time an' let Wendy see for herself how she feels, which I think is the smartest thing ta do here. You gotta trust me on this one, Eric: you can't rush love. Heck, I've been just about head over heels for Kenny for almost as long as you've been head over heels for Wendy, an' we didn't even start datin' until 3 weeks ago! I ain't gonna lie; it was hard, waitin' that long and never tellin' him nothin' about how I felt. But I'm glad I did 'cause it sure paid off in the end. Either way, Eric, you gotta stop mopin' around an' accept things for the way they are. You can't force Wendy ta love you back anymore than I could with Kenny."

Cartman didn't respond to that. He never thought there would come a day when he would have to consider whether Butters Stotch was right, but then again, he never thought he would ever try this hard over a girl who had dumped him years ago, either. He was tired of trying and never achieving anything. So, _so _tired. And despite Butters' opinion to the contrary, he couldn't help but feel that hope was lost. Token didn't have any visible flaws, at least none that would make Wendy break up with him. He, on the other hand, was made of nothing _but _flaws. Even back when he was dating Wendy, back when they were a relatively happy yet dysfunctional couple, he would sometimes feel as if she were picking him apart, dissecting every little problem and laying their organs out on the table for further inspection. He was willing to bet she never had to do that with Token, because he was bare-boned perfection. Token was safe, rich, and honest. He was everything that Cartman wasn't. That must be why Wendy liked him so much, why she was still with him, and why she would most likely continue to stay with him.

Butters evidently interpreted his silence as a sort of willful resignation, because he came up behind Cartman, patted him lightly on the shoulder, and cooed, "That's a good boy. Y-You feelin' any better?"

Cartman forcefully shrugged off Butters' hand, noting the way he flinched but not able to find it in himself to care. "I'm fine," he lied, and then he drew himself up and stalked away from the house, barking an order at Butters to hurry the fuck up.

He had to stay in character, after all.

* * *

"Wait… you and Butters did _what_ today?"

Kenny whipped around in his creaky old oak chair so fast he almost knocked it off the cinder blocks which kept it upright. He glanced over at the husky teen lying on his bed and searched his round face for any tell-tale signs that he was lying, such as the ghost of a smirk on his mouth or tiny laugh lines crinkling in the corners of his eyes, but there was nothing but blankness and, moments later, brief irritation. Cartman pushed himself into a half-sitting position and shot Kenny a look that said he was clearly questioning his intelligence.

"You seriously think I'm going to relive the painful memories of tonight just so you can get your rocks off?"

"You bet I do," Kenny retorted, wiggling one index finger in his earlobe. He _thought _Cartman mentioned something about Butters in a dress giving blowjobs, but he wasn't sure. Sometimes his mind twisted other people's words to align with his numerous fantasies and fetishes so he always sought clarification in case it was just him being fucked up again. That kind of happened a lot, and it's really awkward when someone says something, for example, about their Grandmother dying, and he replies with, "Oh yeah, that's hot". He would like to avoid situations like that as much as possible.

Cartman huffed and stuck his lower lip out, looking eerily like his petulant 9-year-old self. "Well, fahn, but if I kill myself halfway through, my blood is on _your_ hands. I hope you'll be able to live with yourself, Kenny, knowing that it was your perverse sexual lust that drove me over the edge. Think about that for a moment. Think about it some more. Are you ready to accept the consequences?"

"Eh, I think I'll manage."

Cartman glowered at him, to which Kenny simply replied with a cheeky grin. After a few unsuccessful moments of glaring, the heavier boy sighed and yanked down on the hem of his dark gray Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt - the one that he currently had on loan from Kenny, which meant that it was at least four sizes too small, not that he seemed to mind. "Butters and I wasted our entire day following around Wendy's asshole boyfriend when we could've spent our time doing something more exciting, like watching paint dry. No, I'm so seriously, that's how fucking lame he is. God, I hate that douchebag." Cartman paused and looked for a moment like he was going to go into more detail, but surprisingly, he didn't. "So then we wasted even _more_ of our time by going to his equally lame party, where Butters was supposed to hit on Token but instead got hit on by Clyde, because Butters wouldn't know seduction if it came up and slapped him on the ass. Which it did. Well, more like grabbed him by the man-boobs, but the concept is the same."

"Hey," Kenny interjected swiftly, feeling the need to come to his boyfriend's defense. "If I wasn't broke as shit right now, I'd bet you any amount of money that Butters is a freak in the sack. Like, I'm talking Rick James' 'Super Freak' here. Seriously kinky stuff, man." He nodded sagely and suppressed a chuckle.

Cartman made a face. "Oh my God, what kind of world do _you _live in?" he gasped. "Butters is like the Brian Boitano of taking it up the ass. He's such a little girl."

Kenny shrugged, vacuously opening and closing his copy of 'The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe' that he was supposed to do a report on for English. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get into it. Poe was a liar because he made death sound like something exciting and fascinating. Death wasn't either of those things; it was just annoying. He tossed it aside and faced Cartman again, his chin resting on the back of the chair. "I'm telling you, dude, it's always the quiet ones. I should know; I'm one of them."

Cartman snorted, reached for a can of Natty Ice, and then flopped back on the bed with an ominous squeaking of springs. "Psht, Butters isn't quiet. You should've heard him today; 'Eeeericccc, my feeeet huuuurt, Eeeeeericcc, I wish Keeenny would just bone me already'. Blah blah blah, bitch bitch bitch. I've never wanted to muzzle anyone more, except for maybe Kahl and Kahl's Mom and Stan and Mr. Garrison and Craig and those gahs." He cracked open the can and took a sip, his face contorting immediately into an expression of disgust. "God_damn_, Ken, you'd better tell your Dad that he's wasting his welfare checks on horse piss. He could be using all that money on something more beneficial, like a new cardboard box for you all to live in."

Kenny instinctively gave him the finger, but the gesture was lost on Cartman, who had done away with the Natty and rolled onto his side so that he was facing away from him. The blond sighed and ran a hand through his maize-colored hair. He had immediately known something was wrong with Cartman when he showed up on his doorstep, unannounced, and didn't say a word to him for half an hour except to voice a demand for cigarettes and beer, but he thought that whatever had been eating him up would've worked its way out of his system by now. Apparently, it hadn't. Cartman hadn't acted this despondent since Wendy broke up with him. In fact…

Kenny frowned. "Oh, shit. This is about Wendy, isn't it?" he guessed, all thoughts of slutty Butters in a dress now gone as he stood up and walked over to prod Cartman lightly in the shoulder.

The heavier boy reached back to halfheartedly slap his arm away, then announced, "Not gonna talk about it!" He buried his face deeper in Kenny's pillow and gave a smothered whine. "Ewwww, your pillow smells like jizz and poor people germs."

Kenny rolled his eyes. Even while nursing a wounded heart, Cartman was still the rudest, most ungrateful bastard ever to walk the Earth. "Yeah, thanks," he drawled, glancing down at his watch. "Fuck, I'm gonna be late!"

He turned away from Cartman and pulled his trusty parka off the door hook. As he slid his arms into the sleeves and zipped it up to his chin, he felt a pair of eyes on him and turned to see that Cartman was now facing him again, boasting a curious but annoyed expression. Kenny blinked with comprehension as realization dawned on him. "Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that I'm staying over at Butters' house tonight. And before you ask," he added, catching the brief shadow of revulsion that passed over Cartman's face, "No, we're _not _going to fuck. You know Butters. We'll probably spend the whole night playing board games, and not even the sexy kind, like Strip Chocolate."

More silence from Cartman. Kenny reached for his pre-packed duffle bag and hoisted it over his shoulder, then stood in the doorway, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head through the hood. "Hey, uh, feel free to stay as long as you want, dude. The piss-beer is all yours, and there should be another pack of Camels lying around somewhere. Just don't touch my porn. That's punishable by death."

Cartman grumbled something unintelligible in response as Kenny stepped out of the room. "Bye, Eric. Cheer up," he commanded, pulling the door shut behind him. On the long, damp walk to Butters' house, he couldn't help but feel thankful that he wouldn't have to spend the rest of the evening with Cartman. It wasn't that he was apathetic towards his plight - Kenny had been through so much shit in his life that he was able to empathize with basically everyone - he just didn't want to inherit the romantic hot potato that was Cartman and Wendy's relationship. There was too much history there, and as a rule of thumb Kenny avoided love triangles like the plague. Thank God he didn't have any drama like that with Butters.

As he walked, whistling, up Butters' driveway, he noticed that there was an old white Lincoln in place of the Stotches' usual red sedan. This puzzled him for a moment until he realized that Linda and Stephen must be gone. He breathed a mental sigh of relief; Butters' parents scared the shit out of him, to be honest, more than the usual way that teen boys were deathly afraid of overprotective authority figures. Their absence would make things a whole lot easier on him.

He did the usual routine knock on Butters' door and didn't have to wait too long. After what couldn't be any more than a minute, the door was swinging open and Butters was suddenly right in front of him, giving a joyous cry of "Kenny!" before practically tackling him to the ground. Kenny laughed, stumbling backward a few steps from the impact. "God, you act like you haven't seen me in a year," he observed.

"It feels like it," Butters said, nuzzling his face even deeper into Kenny's coat. A few wispy tufts of blond hair brushed Kenny's nose and he found himself inhaling deeply. Butters always smelled like sugar cookies and grass to him, the olfactory embodiment of those childhood days spent equal parts on the playground and in the kitchen. It was kind of comforting.

He rested one gloved hand safely on Butters' hip and tugged down the bottom of his hood to reveal the entirety of his face. Butters once told him that he had always liked the way he talked when his voice was muffled - "'specially when you cuss," he had said, and when Kenny replied by spouting off a list of his choicest swear words, he gave an odd little half-moan, half-laugh that led Kenny to the hilarious conclusion that sweet, innocent Butters was turned on by bad language - but he figured it would be more polite if just for once he didn't force everyone around him to translate his 'parka speak'. "Where are your parents?" he wondered.

Butters pulled back. "Gone," he replied cheerfully, his hands sliding off of Kenny to push the door open. "They're at that silly ol' timeshare in Aspen, y'know, the stinky smellin' place we skied at one time when we were little."

Kenny followed him inside, closing the door behind them with one foot, and tried to figure out just what the hell Butters was talking about. "The timeshare in Ass-what?"

"In Aspen," Butters repeated, looking momentarily confused. Then his eyes widened. "O-Oh, right, you weren't there. I think it woulda been a heck of a lot more fun if you had been, though."

Kenny remained clueless until he remembered his 3-month absence from the world of the living in 4th grade. Stan, Kyle and Cartman still occasionally referenced events from this period, usually when they were discussing Butters' apparent crappiness as the Fifth Ranger of their four-man band. He assumed this must be one of those events.

Butters continued to prattle on as Kenny toed off his Vans and set his duffle bag on the ground. "Speakin' of fun," he said, a little grin slowly materializing on his face, "we're gonna have tons of it tonight!"

Kenny almost choked on air, his earlier conversation with Cartman coming back to him. He had only been joking when he made the claim about Butters being 'a freak in the sack', but Kenny knew dirty talk when he heard it, and that _definitely _sounded like dirty talk. Maybe Butters wasn't quite as pure as he seemed. "Oh really?" he purred, suddenly intrigued.

"Uh, yeah really!" Butters replied obliviously, his grin faltering for a split-second. "We can do the kinda stuff that would normally get me inta loads of trouble, 'cause my folks are gone. I-I mean, my Gramma's here, but she took a bunch of Ambien an' I don't think she's gonna remember anything."

He glanced over at the Stotches' living room for the first time since entering the house and noticed an elderly lady sitting in a floral-patterned armchair, watching them with glazed eyes. "Who that?" she slurred.

"This is Kenny, Gramma," Butters introduced him, flopping a hand in his direction, "He's a good friend."

The old lady sized him up for a minute, muttered something, and then her eyes closed and her head drooped forward. Butters frowned concernedly. "Gosh, that worked fast," he remarked, eyebrows furrowing. "She was s'posed ta stay awake at least another hour."

Kenny unzipped his jacket. "More fun for us, right?" he asked, draping it over the banister.

The radiant grin returned to Butters' face. "Yep! Now we don't have _any _grown-ups watchin' us!" He shuddered with excitement as he walked over to the couch, patting the space next to him invitingly. "Ooooh geez, I feel like a naughty boy now. But you prob'ly feel like that all the time, don't you, Ken?"

Kenny chuckled as he slid into the proffered spot. "Most of the time, yeah," he admitted, crossing his arms over his chest and looking over at Butters. The shorter blond was regarding him with that luminous blue-eyed stare, a slight curve to his lips and a hint of a blush gracing his dimpled cheeks, whether it was a result of their current situation or some leftover makeup from his earlier crossdressing escapade, Kenny wasn't sure. What he _was _sure of was that Butters seemed to get a little more attractive every time he saw him. He cleared his throat. "So… what are we gonna do now?"

If possible, Butters' grin widened further. It was all the warning Kenny got before Butters' hand was arching over his lap, briefly brushing against his thigh, and then closing around… a remote control. Still unaware as ever, he sat back and turned on the TV to "Moulin Rouge".

Kenny just sat there, stuck somewhere between disappointment and 'I'm a fucking idiot'. Of _course _Butters hadn't been dirty-talking to him. Of _course _Butters' idea of scandal was cuddling up on the couch and watching a PG-13 movie. He hadn't been expecting Butters to rip off his pants and ride him like Seabiscuit or anything, but he had been expecting something a little less docile than this.

So that's how Kenny ended up holding Butters' hand and watching a musical for the next two hours. He didn't really mind it, to be honest. Holding hands was a bit gay for his tastes, but it had never killed him (yet), so it wasn't a big deal. The movie wasn't half bad either. Butters liked it because of the music and Ewan McGregor, who he thought was "awful handsome in this movie, if you don't mind me sayin' so, Kenny". Kenny just liked it because it was trippy.

The "Elephant Love Medley" scene came on, and Kenny sneaked a glance at Butters out of the corner of his eye. Butters' mouth was parted slightly, the blue and black and red lights from the screen dancing across his face, which bore an expression of utter absorption as he watched Christian trying to convince Satine of love's virtues. Kenny had never been in love; not even close to it. He didn't know what it felt like, other than what he'd heard from songs and movies and Stan's crappy poems addressed to Wendy in 5th grade, but now he was starting to wonder if maybe _he_ was beginning to fall in love with Butters…? No. There was no way he was in love with Butters. He'd be lying if he said that he wasn't starting to feel some faint romantic inclinations toward him, and he'd be lying even more egregiously if he said that he didn't think Butters was really attractive in his own unique way, but there was no way he felt anything strong enough to be considered 'love'.

Butters was already in love with _him_, though. He was pretty sure of this. Most people would probably consider it a good thing if they thought their boyfriend or girlfriend were in love with them; they would be flattered, they would be happy, or some other equally positive emotion. But the only thing that Kenny felt when he thought of this was dread. Dread, because he knew that it would only make the inevitable breakup harder on him. But maybe he wouldn't have to break up with Butters. Maybe, just maybe, he could fall in love with Butters, and then they could stay together and if they _did_ ever break up, it would be because of other reasons that wouldn't end with Kenny being guilt-stricken for the rest of his life. This scenario sounded like it would be a lot easier on the both of them than their current one.

How hard could it be? Butters was, in essence, the perfect person to fall in love with. He was kind, affectionate, honest, responsible, and loyal, almost to a fault. He was the kind of companion that some people could only _dream _about, and Kenny was lucky enough to have him wrapped around his finger. Kenny would be a downright dumbass _not _to fall in love with him, actually.

"Uh, Kenny?"

The sound of an inquisitive voice broke Kenny out of his thoughts. His eyes snapped back in focus to see that Butters was now facing him, one eyebrow arched curiously and the corners of his mouth pulled down in a meager frown.

"Yeah?" Kenny asked dumbly.

Butters blinked, and then his frown gradually morphed into a knowing smirk. "You were starin'."

"Ah. Shit," Kenny murmured, feeling his face grow warm. He was the master of checking out people without them knowing; he wasn't supposed to get caught! "Yeah, well, you had something on your face."

Butters looked extremely distressed. "I-I did?" he asked, raising one tentative hand to his cheek. "Ah, son of a biscuit. I thought I washed off all of that make-up stuff in the shower…"

Kenny smiled, glad that his excuse had worked. "You missed a spot," he lied, leaning forward to brush his lips across the smooth skin of Butters' forehead.

It was meant to be an innocent peck, a small and rare display of affection on his part, but his attempt to break away was hindered when he suddenly felt two hands sliding up the collar of his shirt and tugging him back in until his lips crashed against Butters' softer ones. He laughed into Butters' mouth as the other boy reclined into the arm of the couch, pulling Kenny down with him. This turn of events was unexpected, but he would go along with it, resolving to stop if things got too hot and heavy. Some harmless kissing was fine, but the _last_ thing he needed was to complicate things by having sex with Butters.

He repositioned himself more comfortably so that his knees were on either side of Butters' hips and their bodies were perfectly aligned, noting the soft moan Butters made as he deepened the kiss. Butters responded further by dragging his hands down the front of Kenny's shirt, those hands that could never seem to stop fidgeting, even in the middle of a make-out session. He was predictable like that. Kenny was glad to know that there were still a few things in life he could count on.

Butters was not conventionally a great kisser, something else that Kenny could've predicted. His movements were unsure, tremulous, and he lacked much of a technique, but Kenny liked that for some reason. He knew that Butters probably didn't have a lot of experience in kissing, but he considered it an endearment instead of a flaw. It made him want to shield Butters from the world and ravage every last shred of his innocence at the same time, which was kind of an odd combination, but a pleasurable one nonetheless.

His hand was beginning to negotiate its way across Butters' stomach when a loud beeping sound from the kitchen halted him mid-caress. He broke off the kiss and sat up, still straddling Butters' hips as he panted and glared venomously at the oven. "Stupid… cockblocking… piece of shit," he growled between ragged breaths.

Butters, who didn't have Kenny's natural athleticism, was breathing even more laboriously. "H-Hamburgers," he gasped out, covering his eyes with the back of one hand. "I-I fuh… forgot 'bout the pizza…" He squirmed in his attempt to sit up, then made a strangled groaning sound and flopped back on the couch, pleading, "K-Kenny - _nggh _- puh-please get off of me…"

Kenny was puzzled at all the weird noises Butters was making until he looked down and saw that the singular point of physical contact between them was their crotches. This made him snicker. "Heh, sorry," he apologized as he awkwardly climbed off, but not before giving a teasing swivel of his hips, just because he was a bastard like that and he knew it would drive Butters crazy.

Butters screwed his eyes shut tight and gave another restrained squeak as he sat up. His hair was even more disheveled than usual, his face tinted rosy-red, and his blue shirt askew, giving him the appearance of someone who had just gotten some serious action (which he totally had, of course). Kenny was very proud of his work. "Well geez-o-pete, I-I think _I'm _the one that oughtta be apologizin'," Butters professed, rubbing his hands up and down his face. "It was all my gosh darn fault we had ta stop."

Kenny snorted. "Like hell it was. So the oven decided to be a bitch and interrupt our face-sucking sesh." He shrugged and reached over to pat Butters comfortingly on the shoulder. "It's not your fault."

Butters peeked out between his fingers. "Really?" he asked hopefully.

He nodded, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles through the cotton material of Butters' sleeve. "Yep. Now how about that pizza?" Kenny proposed with a grin.

Butters hesitantly returned it. "I _am _hungry," he admitted, leaning in to give Kenny one last peck on the cheek before he left.

He returned moments later and half-curled into a ball, his head resting on Kenny's chest as they both ate their slices of pizza and watched the rest of "Moulin Rouge". Butters cried when Satine died at the end, of course, even though he tried to hide it. Kenny pretended not to notice for the sake of Butters' practically nonexistent masculinity, but he wasn't stupid; he could feel the little tear stains seeping through his shirt.

When the movie ended and they had successfully polished off an entire box of pizza between them, Butters turned off the TV and angled his head upward to look at Kenny. "What d'ya wanna do now?"

Kenny draped one arm over the back of the couch and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, pretending to be in deep deliberation. "Hm… what to do now… well, we could make out some more," he suggested, jouncing his eyebrows. "Or, you know, we could watch another movie. Whichever works best for you."

Butters' face lit up so much at this proposition that it was almost comical. "I-I think I like the first one better," he admitted. "Could we… um… do it lyin' down again? 'Cause that was good."

Oh, Butters. Always so candid. "Uh, sure," Kenny said, chuckling.

The other blond glanced over at his still-sleeping Grandma and began to blush furiously. "An' could we also go up ta my bedroom?" he asked, hands fidgeting atop his lap. "I know she's sleepin', but kissin' you with her in the same room just gives me the heebie-jeebies."

Kenny looked at Butters' Grandma, who appeared stern and scary as hell even in her sleep, and had to agree. "Me too," he concurred. But as he grabbed his duffle bag and followed Butters upstairs, he couldn't help but feel apprehensive. Kenny wasn't exactly known for his self-restraint, especially when it came to the possibility of sex, and being in a bedroom setting would only make things worse. Combined with the fact that he hadn't gotten laid in months, this was a recipe for disaster. He was convinced that this was all some sort of evil test from God.

He got changed in the bathroom while Butters got changed in the bedroom. As he brushed his teeth, he reminded himself that he did _not _fuck friends. He liked sex, sure, but he could live without it, and his friends were way more important. And even though he and Butters were more than just friends now, he knew that sex meant a lot more to Butters than it did to him. Butters was still a virgin as far as Kenny knew, and he also seemed like the type of person who would only give up their V-card to someone who was truly in love with them, which Kenny wasn't.

…Why was he thinking about this so much? Butters probably hadn't even been _thinking _about sex when he suggested they go to his bedroom. He was naïve. He said stuff like that all the time without knowing of any dirtier connotations. With one last spit into the sink, he left the bathroom, now clad in flannel pants and a plain white shirt.

Butters was waiting for him in the bedroom, his legs folded underneath him and his bright blue eyes drifting shut. They snapped open again as soon as Kenny entered the room and perched on the edge of the bed. "Heya Kenny," he began, but any further conversation was cut off by a yawn.

"Someone's tired," Kenny observed, smiling. He glanced at the Hello Kitty wall clock to see that it was only 9:30; early for him, but probably bedtime for Butters.

Butters yawned again. "No, I ain't," he protested feebly.

"You kind of are, dude," Kenny informed him gently, already back on his feet. "It's okay though. I know you had a long day…" He snickered. "…Getting felt up by Clyde and trying to suck Token's dick."

Butters' face paled with mortification. "Aw, heck, Eric wasn't s'posed ta tell you that!" he babbled. "A-An' I didn't suck nobody's wiener! Promise!" He made the 'cross my heart' sign over his chest.

Kenny just continued to laugh. "I believe you." His gaze roamed around the room. "You got a sleeping bag or anything?"

For some reason, Butters looked dismayed at this request. "Uh, well, n-not a sleeping bag, but there should be an Aerobed in my closet."

"An Aerobed?" Kenny repeated, impressed. "Damn." He pulled out the inflatable bed, hooked it up, and sat back on his palms, watching as it slowly filled with air. When he glanced up at Butters, he saw that the other boy was giving him an appraising look. Kenny quirked one brow and waited for him to speak.

Butters suddenly became very interested in his bedspread. "Kenny…," he began, picking at a loose thread in the sheets, "Now, I'm gonna ask you somethin', an' I want you ta be honest with me here, okay?"

Kenny blinked. "Yeah, sure. Of course," he replied easily. "What's up?"

Butters swallowed audibly, his picking becoming more forceful. "Do you… do you think we're a good couple?" He pulled the covers a little farther up his chest, as if they could shield him from Kenny's answer.

_What kind of question is _that_? _Kenny almost said, but he could see that this had clearly been bothering Butters for quite some time, so he took a more sensitive approach. "_I _think so," he responded, then turned the inquiry back to Butters. "You don't?"

He gasped. "No, no, I do! I-I really do!" he asserted. "It's just… um… some people don't…"

Kenny felt his forehead crinkle in confusion and mild annoyance. "Look, Butters, I can't help you with whatever's chewing on your 'nads if you keep pussyfooting around." He stopped placing blankets atop his fully-inflated bed and faced Butters to show that he was serious. "So what happened?"

Butters sighed. "A coupla weeks ago, in class, Bebe was talkin' about how she wanted a boyfriend. She was wonderin' if you were… ah… available, an' Wendy said she should ask you out, 'cause she's like the lady version of you an' it would make sense." He looked at Kenny, his eyes swimming with a sort of fearful resignation. "If you don't wanna go out with me no more 'cause you like Bebe, I'd understand. I ain't nothin' special."

Kenny could've laughed at the insinuation that he'd dump Butters for Bebe, just because it was so ludicrous, but he didn't because he knew it would only make Butters feel worse. His heart gave a sympathetic twinge for the boy in front of him, who was so needlessly and ridiculously insecure. "I don't like Bebe," he said slowly, carefully. "I mean, yeah, she's pretty hot, and she's cooler than most girls at our school, but I don't _like _her. I like _you_. And you shouldn't be listening to Wendy anyway. She's smart as fuck about a lot of things, but relationships isn't one of them, obviously, since she's still dating Token instead of Cartman." He paused, then mimicked Butters' earlier 'cross my heart' motion. "You don't have to worry about me dumping you for anybody. Promise."

After a moment of pondering, Butters' face brightened with a disarming smile. "Thanks, Kenny," he said quietly.

"Anytime," Kenny replied with a wink as he climbed under the covers. Butters turned off the bedside lamp, plunging everything into near-darkness, with only the moonlight to partially illuminate the room.

"'Night, Kenny."

"'Night, Butters."

Kenny rolled onto his side, pulling the blankets up to his shoulders. It was kind of sad that an inflatable mattress was so much more comfortable than his own bed back at home, but he didn't really care; he was just glad that, for once, he would be able to wake up in the morning without an achy back.

If he was ever able to fall asleep, that is. He was still wide awake 30 minutes later when he heard Butters' bed creaking, followed by the sound of tip-toeing, followed by the feeling of another body sliding underneath the covers next to him. Kenny was unable to keep the smirk out of his voice as he murmured, "Hi Butters."

He could feel Butters stiffen beside him. "Oh, poo," he whispered after a few seconds. "I thought I was bein' sneaky."

Kenny turned so that he and Butters were face to face, their knees bumping. "You were. I just have superhuman hearing," he confided in him secretively.

Butters giggled, drowsiness making his voice sound deeper than normal. "I-I didn't wake you up, did I?" he asked anxiously, brushing a few strands of hair from Kenny's face. "If I did, I'm awful sorry."

Kenny's eyelids unintentionally fluttered shut at the touch. "Mmm, no. I don't normally fall asleep until after midnight." He cracked one eye open. "But if you keep doing that, I'll be out like a light in no time. Jesus, that feels nice."

Butters gave another throaty laugh and continued to run his fingers through Kenny's hair. He was starting to really enjoy moments like this. "You don't mind this too much, right?" Butters asked suddenly.

"Hm?"

"Me. Sleepin' with you. In the same bed," he said, like he was trying to explain trigonometry to a four-year-old. "I was bein' pretty selfish, not even thinkin' that you might wanna have the bed to yourself. I wouldn't be sore at you if you did. I kinda hog the covers sometimes."

"Nah, I don't mind," Kenny mumbled, feeling Butters' fingertips graze the outer shell of his ear.

The hand stilled on his cheek, and then Butters' mouth was capturing his own in a slow, soft kiss that ended far too soon. When Butters pulled away, he planted a briefer kiss on his lips, like a signature, and then he was resting his head against Kenny's collarbone. Kenny dubiously wrapped his arms around Butters since he wasn't sure what else he was supposed to do with them, having never had someone in bed with him for non-sexual reasons before. _I could get used to it, though, _he mused silently as he listened to Butters' steady, even breathing.

He stayed like that for awhile, just holding Butters and thinking about what Stan and Kyle were going to do, if Cartman and Wendy would ever get their shit together, and whether he was helping Butters' condition or worsening it, when the boy in his arms shifted and murmured "I love you" into his chest.

"Yeah," Kenny whispered, smiling sadly. "I know you do."


	11. Getting Away With It

**A/N: **Hey. I'm just going to apologize in advance if there's anything... 'off' about this chapter. My Grandma, who was very close to me, died last week, so I've been trying to deal with that on top of a big-ass English project, exams, and writing this. So that's my excuse, I guess. I considered making a bunch of BP-inspired "Sorry" ads, but I don't have any beautiful scenery or adorable exotic animals to pose with, so I settled with a written explanation.

And on a lighter note, I had a dream (more like a nightmare) last night that I accidentally uploaded and published the plot outline for the final chapters of this story on , so I woke up at like 2 AM to make sure that no one knew the ending... haha.

Once again, thanks to everyone who continues to read. I love you people.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own South Park.

**Chapter 10**

Butters could understand why Kenny often wore his parka inside his own home.

He, himself, was wearing wool pants, fuzzy socks, his blue jacket, and a long-sleeved shirt underneath that, yet there were goosebumps all over the exposed parts of his skin and he could see his breath condensing on the air. It had to be nearly as cold in the house as it was outside. He wasn't going to complain, though; Kyle would probably call him a pussy. Instead, he scooted closer to his boyfriend on the bed until their shoulders were touching and tried not to let his teeth chatter as he turned his focus to the video game Kyle and Kenny were playing.

Kenny briefly looked away from the game to flash him a sidelong smile, or at least what Butters _thought _was a smile. He couldn't really tell because Kenny's mouth was obscured by his hood, but there was a happy twinkle in his upturned eyes so Butters assumed the rest of his face looked happy, too. Butters returned the smile shyly and Kenny patted his knee before going back to smashing buttons.

"Have you talked to Stan yet today?" Kyle asked as his character shot someone's head off. Butters winced. He didn't like violent video games, but he knew Kenny did, so he would deal with it for his sake.

"Nope," Kenny replied simply, toggling the analog stick.

"Oh. Well, he kind of gave me a blowjob last night. So."

"What?" Kenny and Butters exclaimed in tandem, the former ripping his eyes away from the TV screen to gaze dumbfoundedly at the redhead.

Kyle nodded, still focused on the video game. "Yep. I was really stressed out, trying to make dinner for Gorak - he'll only eat seafood, ironically, so I had to buy shitloads of expensive shellfish that I'll never be able to indulge in - and Stan was like, 'Here, let me help you with that', and the next thing I know, he's sucking me off in the kitchen. Thank God my Mom wasn't home. Non-kosher food and BJs? She'd die."

"Stan _finally_ got the balls to give you a blowjob, and you didn't bother to invite me?" Kenny whined. "Way to crush my hopes and dreams, dude. I'm gonna be sexually frustrated for months now, thanks to you."

"It's not like I planned it," Kyle said, rolling his eyes. "And according to Stan, it was a 'bro job', not a blow job. There's a difference. I looked it up on Urban Dictionary, and apparently a bro job is when one straight guy helps out another straight guy by going down on him. Nothing gay about it." He punched a red button with his thumb. "I freaked out at first, but it seems pretty legit to me, so I don't foresee any sexuality-related crises in my future."

"You did not just say 'legit'."

"I'm afraid I did."

"I-I dunno, fellas," interjected Butters, who was finding this whole conversation very confusing. "That all sounds pretty gay ta me."

Kenny acknowledged his point with a nod. "Yeah, the only difference _I _see is that one situation involves a fuck-ton of denial… And I'm not talking about the river, either." He snickered. "But I guess the real question here is: did you like it or not?"

Kyle mulled over this for a moment. "Well, yeah," he conceded slowly, "But how could I not? It was oral stimulation, so my body appreciated the sexual contact, regardless of gender. I probably would've reacted the same exact way had it been a girl, not Stan, on the giving end."

Kenny sniffled and wiped away a fake tear. "If only the rest of the world could be as accepting as your dick, Kyle."

Kyle walloped him in the arm, earning only a laugh from Kenny, and then turned back to the game. On the screen, his character raised its gun and shot Kenny's character point-blank in the chest. 'PLAYER 2 IS DEAD, HA HA HA' flashed across the TV in bright green letters.

"Fuck!" came Kenny's inevitable muffled outburst.

"Oh my God, Kyle," Butters cried in horror, "Y-You just killed Kenny!"

"I'm a bastard!" Kyle shouted, shaking his fist at the sky. An awkward, contemplative silence followed this exchange, and then Kyle drew his knees up to his chest. "That felt really weird. No offense, Butters."

"Aw heck, that's fine. I felt kinda weird sayin' it, too."

The Jew slowly rose to his feet. "You know what? I'm going to Stan's house. I don't even care." He zipped up his coat, set down the controller, and walked toward the door. "And I don't want to be here when you and Butters get all gay on each other."

"Suit yourself. You're gonna be missing out on some pretty hot stuff!" Kenny yelled after him. The door closed firmly shut and as Kenny's laughter began to trail off, Butters suddenly became very aware of the fact that they were now sitting on his bed, alone. A shiver ran up his spine, partially from the cold and partially from excitement. He didn't mean to be selfish or anything, but he loved it when he had Kenny's attention all to himself. It didn't happen very often so he cherished the few times it did.

The other blond quirked an eyebrow at him. "Cold?" he guessed. "Sorry about that. The heater broke, and we don't really have enough money to fix it right now."

"Ah, i-it's okay, Ken. I'm not all that c-cold," Butters lied.

"Hey, you don't have to act polite or tough for me. I'm freezing my nuts off," Kenny admitted, rubbing his hands together. Then something strange happened. His eyes lit up and curved mischievously as he turned to face Butters. "I know a way to get us warmed up."

Butters gulped. "R-Really? Like, uh, like hot chocolate, or a bunch of blankets?"

The smirk widened. "I had something else in mind," he said, chuckling lowly. It was all the warning Butters got before Kenny's hands were on his shoulders, pinning him down onto the bed with a squeak of protest from the rusty springs.

"A-Are we gonna get gay now?" Butters asked, unable to hide an anticipatory grin as his light blue eyes met Kenny's darker, half mast ones, clouded with a thin sheen of desire. After so many years of silently pining over Kenny and not knowing whether his feelings were returned, he almost couldn't believe that _he_ was the one to put the desire in those pretty irises. He reached up to remove Kenny's hood, revealing the rest of his smirking face and the corn-yellow tufts of hair that seemed to be stuck in a permanent state of bedhead, no matter the time of day. Butters loved his hair.

Kenny's expression softened slightly at the touch and then he was leaning down, covering Butters' lips with his own. Butters pressed back and obligingly opened his mouth to allow Kenny's tongue further access. As much as he loved Kenny's hair, he loved Kenny's kissing even more. It filled him with a warm, tingly feeling that spread from the pit of his stomach down to his tippy-toes, a feeling that used to be akin to butterflies but now more closely resembled racing electricity. Sometimes he felt a _different _kind of tingling in a very specific region of his body, but that was embarrassing and he didn't really want to think about it or else it might happen again. He didn't think about much of anything when he was kissing Kenny. All he knew was that it felt right, it felt good, and he didn't want to be anywhere else in the whole wide world when they were kissing. Heck, he felt that way even when he was just sharing the same breathing space as Kenny. It didn't take much to make him happy.

He shuddered as one of Kenny's cold hands slid underneath his shirt to cup his lower back, then moved around to trace his ribcage. Butters felt his skin twitch and clamped his mouth shut to hold back the laughter that was threatening to bubble forth. Apparently he wasn't very good at hiding it, because Kenny's hand stilled and he stopped pressing feathery kisses to the column of Butters' neck.

"You're ticklish?" Kenny asked, pulling back slightly to fix him with a look of amusement. "That's fucking adorable."

Butters blushed. "N-No, I ain't ticklish, not me, what made ya think that? I was just-" The second part of Kenny's sentence finally processed in his brain and he blushed even deeper. "Huh?"

Kenny didn't reply, just flashed him a devilish grin and wiggled his fingers against Butters' skin. This time, Butters couldn't hold it back. All he could do was giggle and squirm, helpless, as Kenny's hands glided over the sensitive parts of his skin, playing him like an instrument. "You're - a - a - a meanie," Butters gasped out between peals of laughter.

Kenny chuckled. "Yeah, I'm a jerk," he conceded, and he gave Butters a grin that was so adorably sheepish it made his heart do somersaults in his chest. Butters surged upward to recapture Kenny's lips, then shifted into a slightly more comfortable position, his back against the headboard and Kenny in his lap. He let his fingers barely glide over Kenny's face, across the bridge of his upturned nose, the jutting line of his cheekbone, the indent of a scar on his jaw that had faded long ago, mapping out the features and committing them to memory. His hand dropped away and he hooked one finger in the zipper of Kenny's parka, slowly tugging it down… and then someone knocked on the door. Kenny sighed and shot him an apologetic glance before climbing off the bed.

While Kenny talked to his brother in the doorway, Butters politely tuned the conversation out (eavesdropping was rude, after all) and looked around the room. The 'GET WELL SOON' teddy bear he'd gifted to Kenny a few weeks ago was perched among old cans of beer and Mountain Dew on a dresser. That made him smile, his heart swelling with a renewed surge of affection for the boy just a few feet away. Little things like that reminded him of why he'd fallen in love with Kenny in the first place.

The door shut again and Kenny leaned against it, suddenly looking very haggard. "My brother's a dick," he grumbled in lieu of an apology. "Plus, his girlfriend's a total cow who won't put out for him, so he goes around ruining everyone else's moments to make himself feel better about his crappy love life. You know what I mean?"

Butters nodded sagely, like he understood exactly what Kenny was talking about. It _did _make him happy to know that they'd been having a 'moment', though. "Like Eric?" he asked, tilting his head to one side. "He's kind of a nasty ol' cockblocker, ain't he?"

Kenny laughed the special laugh he only made when Butters said a bad word. "Eric is _definitely _a nasty ol' cockblocker," he agreed, joining Butters on the bed again. "It's natural for him, though. Kevin just acts like a douche because he thinks he's cool. Which he's not. He's an asshole."

Butters curled up against Kenny's chest. "I don't think you should be sayin' that sorta stuff about your brother," he said, absently tracing the line of Kenny's parka zipper.

"Why?"

Butters frowned. "Well, gosh, he's part of your family, a-an' I'm sure he loves you a whole lot, even if he acts dumb sometimes."

Kenny snorted. "Yeah. Right. Don't try to understand it, Butters. Your family sucks ass, so what makes you think you know anything about mine?" Butters flinched at those words, knowing in his heart of hearts that they were true, but he didn't say anything in return, just blinked away the moisture fogging up his eyes and listened to the _buh-bump buh-bump _of Kenny's heartbeat growing faster and more erratic. He felt one hand slowly inch up his spine to toy with the blond ringlets at the nape of his neck. "Fuck, I'm sorry," Kenny murmured, planting a kiss on the top of his head. "So, so, _so_ sorry. I didn't mean it, dude. I just… fuck. That was really uncalled for."

Butters inhaled a quivery breath and rolled onto his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows. He could see that Kenny really _did _look sorry for what he'd said - almost disproportionately remorseful, like he'd been apologizing for something bigger - and Butters couldn't be sore at him for very long, so he leaned down to press a soft kiss to Kenny's worry-wrinkled forehead. When he pulled away, the wrinkle was gone, but Kenny's eyes still looked sad. "Hey, don't worry," he whispered, resting one palm against the side of Kenny's face. "I know you didn't mean nothin'. You're right, though. I don't got a brother, but I'd prob'ly be complainin' too if I had one." He paused. "Unless it was you. That would be neato! I don't think I'd mind at all if you were my brother."

Kenny grinned a true 'Kenny grin' at that. "_I _would. That's called incest, bro. I'm into a lot of kinky shit but brother-fucking is a big no-no."

Butters removed his hand from Kenny's face to rub the back of his own head. "Oh, geez. I guess that's not so neato after all, huh?" he said, laughing a little out of embarrassment.

Kenny laughed too. "No, not really," he agreed, folding his arms behind his head and staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully. Since Butters was still a little cold, he scooted closer to Kenny and went back to using him as a human pillow. Kenny was skinny and therefore not as cushiony or conducive to snuggling like Cartman, who had the physique of a fluffy marshmallow, but Kenny was warm and he always smelled nice and Butters didn't have to worry about being strung upside-down from the ceiling fan around him, which was what happened the first - and last - time he'd tried to cuddle with Cartman.

"If you don't mind me askin', what did Kevin want?" Butters inquired after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

Kenny abruptly assumed a sitting position. "Oh, shit, that's right. He finally got some spare parts for our car and he wanted me to install them today."

Butters also shifted upright. "You got a car?" he asked, somewhat bemused. As far as he knew, Kenny always walked everywhere, or hitched a ride with someone when the distance was too far.

Kenny forced out a hollow laugh. "Exactly," he said, rising to his feet. The two of them left the bedroom, picking their way across the trash that littered the hallway in a manner that Butters thought was very cool and ninja-like to get to the garage. "Hey, if I can actually fix the goddamn car, I'll take you out on a date to somewhere nice. Sound good?" He elbowed him in the side.

Butters beamed. "Oh boy, that would be _awesome_!" he enthused.

They spent the next two hours in the small McCormick garage, Butters lounging on the top of the car while Kenny stretched out underneath it, using a skateboard as a makeshift creeper. The classic rock music emanating from the radio was punctuated by occasional bursts of conversation, and Butters was kind of thankful that they weren't talking face-to-face. He was certain that if he got to see Kenny all hot and dirty and working out, covered in a thin layer of sweat and oil, he would start thinking bad thoughts and probably have to excuse himself.

Oh, hamburgers. He was thinking bad thoughts.

Kenny didn't pop out from under the car completely until they heard a poorly-sung rendition of "Walking on Sunshine", followed by Towelie stumbling into the garage, uttering a broken request to buy some drugs from Kevin. He directed Towelie in the right direction and that was that, although Butters _did _attempt to give him a stern talking-to that never really panned out. Once the annoying towel had gone, Kenny turned to Butters, shaking his head in disbelief, and Butters had to pull down his coat and cross his legs to hide how happy it was making him to see Kenny like that, every bit as hot and dirty as he'd imagined.

"Fucking towel, huh? Poor guy," Kenny remarked. He lifted his arms above his head in a languid stretch, the rolled-up sleeves of his parka revealing peachy skin. Butters gulped and looked away.

"Yeah," Butters said, his voice cracking a bit. He coughed and focused on two stray dogs fighting over a piece of meat in the distance. Hopefully the barbaric sight would do something to fix the problem in his pants, which seemed to be getting worse the more Kenny talked.

There was silence, save for the Eagles song playing on the radio. Then, "Are you still upset about what I said earlier?" Butters' eyes flicked back to Kenny, somewhat unwillingly, to see the rueful expression on the boy's face. "God, I feel like such a _dick_."

Kenny took a few cautious steps forward and Butters yanked down even harder on the hem of his coat. "Never at you, Kenny," Butters assured him, now holding Kenny's gaze unwaveringly with the brilliant logic that if they were looking into each other's eyes, he wouldn't draw any attention to his groin. "W-Why?"

Kenny took another step. "You look really… um… uncomfortable," he began, continuing to walk forward until he was close enough for Butters to see the tiny ice blue chips in his eyes. When Butters didn't say anything, Kenny's stare slowly traveled downward, and Butters could only sit there, frozen like a statue, as the heat rushed to the tips of his ears. He liked to think that maybe Kenny wouldn't notice, but that was a pipe dream. Kenny _knew _things about people. Even strangers. Butters was reminded of the time they went to the mall and people-watched over a 99 cent orange smoothie.

("See that guy? Right there? The one that looks like Cartman in 20 years or so?"

"Uh, I-I think so."

"Father of two kids. Wife banged a co-worker. Recently divorced."

"Aww, gee whiz… poor fella."

"That's nothing. Look at the blonde chick, over there, walking out of Dick's Sporting Goods."

"The lady with the tennis racket?"

"That's the one. Total lesbian."

"Holy smokes! How didja know that?"

"Gaydar. And fuck, dude, _she plays tennis_. That's like the carpet-munching kiss of death.")

So Kenny was good at reading people. Especially when it came to sexuality. But if Kenny noticed Butters' arousal, he didn't say anything about it. Butters considered this a personal victory, since it wasn't very often that he saved himself from humiliation, though the tiny smirk that flickered across Kenny's face _was _worrisome. "O-Oh. Um, that's 'cause my belly's kinda achin' right now," he offered as explanation, still hoping that Kenny wouldn't realize the actual problem was a few inches below his stomach.

"Ah," was all that Kenny said in reply. He leaned against the car door casually, his gaze now back on Butters' face, and the corners of his lips rippled with the effort to suppress a smile. "Are you still cold?"

"Uh," Butters replied intelligently. In truth, he was feeling uncomfortably warm, especially around the collar. He couldn't tell that to Kenny, though. After a few seconds, he came to the belated realization that maybe 'are you cold?' was becoming a euphemism for 'wanna make out?', and if that was true, he also sure as heck couldn't say 'yes', because then he'd be agreeing to make out and he was pretty sure that was _not _going to do his wiener any favors. "Uh," he said again.

Kenny chuckled and started unzipping his parka before Butters could stammer out a protest. He shrugged it off slowly, deliberately, and at this point Butters was sure that Kenny knew because why else would he start stripping in front of him? Butters didn't know whether to be turned on or mortified and ended up with an awkward combination of the two. His jaw was hanging a little loose and he could tell that he probably looked stupid right now, and if that wasn't bad enough, he _felt _stupid when Kenny handed the parka to him and just stood there patiently. Of course Kenny wasn't taking his clothes off; he was just being a gentleman by offering a coat to his 'cold' boyfriend. Butters needed to learn how to behave himself and to stop having such gosh darn dirty thoughts.

He sloughed off his own blue coat, balling it up and using it to cover his lap, then graciously took the parka from Kenny's outstretched hand and slipped his arms into it. The parka was too small for Kenny, but an almost perfect fit for Butters. This was because Butters was a late bloomer and therefore still somewhat gangly, in contrast to Kenny, who was the first of their friends to hit puberty in 7th grade (when he received his current parka) and had gone through several growth spurts since then. Butters marveled at how comfortable the coat was, how it seemed to cling to him in all the right places. It smelled like Kenny, too. "Aw shucks. Thanks, Ken," Butters said as he hugged himself, torn between wanting to kiss Kenny senseless and not wanting to disturb the carefully-placed coat on his lap.

Kenny shrugged. "You can keep it, if you want. Damn thing hasn't fit me since last year." He rubbed his chin and looked Butters up and down, smiling to himself. "And besides, you look good in it."

Butters felt his heart flutter at the compliment. "Really?" he asked, looking down at the tattered and worn parka with a newfound sense of endearment. "A-Are you sure?"

"About what? Me letting you keep it, or you looking good in it?"

"Well, both, I-I guess," Butters said, grinning, "but I was talkin' about the first one. Do you really wanna give it away? How're you gonna stay warm?"

"I'm 100% sure… On both accounts," Kenny asserted, resting one arm against the car's hood. "And don't worry, I'll survive somehow."

"I sure hope so." Butters leaned down to peck Kenny on the temple, figuring that a full-blown kiss was too risky for now, but Kenny turned his head at the last minute and their lips collided. He stiffened and wondered if it would be best for him to pull away prematurely, but it was Kenny who ended the closed-mouthed kiss.

"I'm going under," he announced, affectionately tapping Butters on the nose before sitting down on the skateboard again. "See ya."

"See ya," Butters replied as Kenny disappeared beneath the car. He smiled to himself and lay back, shoving his hands into the pockets of Kenny's parka - _his _parka, now! - while he listened to the radio. Whenever a song came on that he knew, he would sing along heartily, and Kenny would sometimes join him on the chorus or laugh when Butters hit a high note. He thought they made a good team, if he did say so himself.

After the 5th Journey song, Butters' throat was beginning to feel dry and scratchy so he stopped singing. Kenny also remained silent. He was probably busy concentrating on fixing the car. Butters removed his old coat off his lap, the erection having (thankfully) died off an hour ago, and chewed on the inside of his cheek ruminatively. "I think I know what I'm gettin' you for Christmas," he declared during the middle of a commercial.

This announcement was met with a _BANG! _and a subsequent stream of colorful curse words. Butters had to briefly cover his ears, because he could feel the blood moving southward with every utterance that came out of Kenny's mouth and he _really _didn't want to get stuck with another boner, but he grew concerned as soon as the onslaught of swearing ended.

He heard Kenny scrambling out from underneath the car and saw his head pop up over the edge moments later. "_Christmas?_" he repeated, eyes wide. "Fuuuuuck. When did _that _happen?"

Butters blinked and sat up. "Well, uh, not yet, but in 5 days." He cocked his head to the side. "Ya didn't know?"

"No, I didn't. Shit shit shit shit!" Kenny ran a grimy hand through his hair.

Butters screwed his eyes shut. "Please stop cussin'," he groaned, hands fisting in the loose material of the parka.

"What? Oh. Okay. Sorry about that." He opened his eyes warily to see the same knowing smirk from earlier appear on Kenny's face before melting away into an agitated frown. "So I have 5 days to scrounge together enough money to get you a decent Christmas gift? That… isn't good."

Butters frowned as well, though he appreciated Kenny's self-censorship. "Kenny, you don't hafta get me nothin'." He paused, then spread his arms wide and added, "All I want for Christmas is you!"

A wan smile ghosted across Kenny's lips. "That's really sweet and all, Butters, but I kind of _have _to get you a gift. If you bought something for me and I didn't get one for you, then that would make me a shi- _sucky _boyfriend, and I really don't want that to happen."

"Who says? I wouldn't think you were a sucky boyfriend. I ain't gonna make you do anythin' you don't wanna, an' you gave me your coat, so doesn't that count as an early present?"

"Not really," Kenny said, folding his arms across the roof of the car. "Let me rephrase that: I don't _have _to get you something, because you said so yourself, but I _want _to get you something. Okay?"

"Okay," Butters agreed happily. "But don't you go stressin' yourself out over it, mister. It's not worth the trouble for a silly little Christmas gift."

Kenny cracked a more relaxed smile. "I won't." He absently tapped out a beat against the peeling paint of the roof with his fingers, then gave it a more definitive pat and sidled over to the front of the car to open the hood. Butters lied back and watched Kenny, cheek cradled in his hand, and felt the waves of contentment wash over him. Just being in his presence made Butters' body hum with elation, as if it realized that this was the only person for him, the person he loved. And he loved him, he really did. So much so that it physically hurt sometimes. Mostly, Butters was happy; happier than he could ever remember being in his 16 years of life. But because Butters could never leave well enough alone, and because his mind liked to overcomplicate things for him, there was always that niggling voice in the back of his brain, telling him, _'Don't mess this up. You're gonna mess this up.' _Butters was used to messing things up. Failure was one of the few things he could count on. It seemed like no matter what he did, it was always dogging him, always ready to sabotage his endeavors, and this relationship was the biggest endeavor Butters had ever taken on. If there was one thing he didn't want to mess up, it was what he had with Kenny. Anything but that, anything… _Please, just this once, let me get it right_…

* * *

Wendy didn't know what kind of bone or hormone that other girls had in their body that allowed them to get over guys like Cartman, but she didn't possess it.

No one else knew this or would even consider it. _She _was the one who broke up with Cartman, after all, and that came as a surprise to no one. She could still clearly remember the day she announced to everyone present at the lunch table that she and Eric Cartman were officially an 'item'. "Why _him_?" the other girls had questioned, not even bothering to hide their disdain. "You could do so much better!" Wendy responded to these inquiries by stating that she didn't _want _anything 'better' and if they couldn't accept that, they could take their own boyfriends and 'shove it' (albeit in slightly more colorful terms).

She could also remember with equal clarity the day, 6 months later, she imparted the news that she and Eric Cartman had broken up. "We told you so!" they replied smugly, taking pride that their prediction of the relationship's eventual failure had been correct in a way that only extremely bitchy teen girls could. "Cartman never deserved you. He was lucky that you even went out with him in the first place." Wendy didn't bother defending her ex-boyfriend because she knew they wouldn't understand. She also didn't bother telling them that _she _was the one that didn't deserve _him_, because they would find this even more confusing and their tiny brains would probably explode from incomprehension.

Everyone just assumed that the blame for the break-up rested solely on Cartman's shoulders, and for good reason. He was a lying, manipulative, murderous asshole whose only relationships involved him using people for his own personal gain. They figured Wendy had just gotten sick of the abuse. They didn't know that, if anything, _Wendy_ had been the user, not Cartman. The whole relationship had been based on middle-school hormones and her desire for a 'bad boy'. She was tired of being so predictable; she got all A's, she was an outstanding member of the community, and the perfect little daughter to boot. They always expected her to do The Right Thing. But for once, she wanted to do The Wrong Thing. She wanted to do something that would shock people, and Cartman was all too willing to be that shock factor. It was cliché, she knew that much, but perhaps the only thing that saved them from being one of those cheesy teen movie couples was the fact that Cartman was worse than your stereotypical 'bad boy'. He was _all _bad. He was pure, high-octane danger, and without any of the characteristic redeemable traits like extraordinary good looks or a lot of money.

That was how it started, but that wasn't how it ended.

If she had to sum up those 6 months of dating in one word, it would be 'insanity'. They fought more often than was probably healthy, they ended said fights by either giving the silent treatment for weeks on end or by kissing the other person to shut them up, and the few times Cartman truly attempted romance were embarrassing at best and miserable at worst. Wendy couldn't count the number of times she considered ending it, and she was sure that the same sentiment crossed Cartman's mind just as frequently (probably more since he was so damn impatient). It was the little things that kept them together, the moments that neither of them could have planned: when no one was watching and Cartman would slip his hand into hers; when he'd throw a particularly biting insult at Kyle and look to her for approval, his eyes shining with hope; when they'd sit on the couch watching the news and Cartman would rip on her political beliefs, calling her lovely names like "stupid liberal bitch" and "tree-hugging hippie ho", but then immediately offset them by kissing her gently when he saw how upset she was. They still fought over the stupidest things, but the little moments became more common, and then the little moments turned into _big _moments. It was during one of the little moments, both of them curled up on her bed and watching some dramatic movie that Cartman kept making fun of, and he turned to her after the movie ended with the sweetest, most genuine smile she'd ever seen on his face, when she realized that she was in love with Eric Cartman.

She broke up with him two weeks later, and she never saw that smile again.

Even worse, she'd given him the cop-out explanation of "it just wasn't working out". She didn't tell him the truth: that she was head-over-heels in love with him, and how it scared her out of her fucking mind to be so attached to someone because she knew that he couldn't possibly return her feelings and if he ever found out, he would laugh at her. The idea that she could have made an incorrect assumption didn't even cross her mind until months later, when he looked her in the eyes for the first time since the breakup and she saw such pain and hurt and anger in there that it took her breath away. He had been just as invested in the relationship as she was. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, but by then it was too late. The damage was done.

Wendy went back to the way things used to be B.C. (Before Cartman). It took her awhile, but she started dabbling in the world of romance again. Her first boyfriend after the breakup was Clyde Donovan, which ended shortly after she realized that he was dumber than a bag of hammers. She decided she must be into insufferable douchebags, so she went out with Craig Tucker, but he ended up being the wrong kind of insufferable douchebag and she dumped him after 3 weeks. Then she turned to Stan as a last-ditch effort, figuring that their previous stint as childhood lovers must count for something. It didn't. Basically, the whole thing was one big, awkward mess, and she wouldn't be at all surprised if he turned out gay. At least they emerged from the wreckage as good friends, and Stan was the one who suggested she go out with Token, so it wasn't all that bad.

Cartman never really got over it. As far as she knew, he had only had two girlfriends since they broke up, and those were mostly just to spite her. She could still remember the sting of jealousy when she saw him kissing Sally Turner up against a locker, breaking apart the passionate liplock only to shoot her a brief malicious grin that seemed to say _'How does it feel?' _If Wendy had to be perfectly honest, she had never really gotten over it, either. (and of course she made sure to spike Powder extra hard during volleyball practice the day after)

In the present day, Wendy was eating dinner with her parents when she felt her phone vibrate against her leg. She ignored it, not being the type of rude teenager to talk on the phone while at the dinner table, but it rang three more times and she decided that whoever was calling her must have something pretty damn important to say. "Excuse me," she said to her Mom and Dad as she stood up, walked into the living room, and pulled out her cell phone. The name on the screen was almost enough to make her turn around and go back, but she didn't. She couldn't.

"Cartman," she greeted brusquely, her heart in her mouth.

"Miz Testabitcher," he shot back pleasantly. "I hope I'm not calling you at an inconvenient time."

She sank into the couch. "Oh, no, not at all. I was just having dinner with my parents. Not inconvenient whatsoever."

"Ah, you're as big of a snarky ho as ever," Cartman said, and she could've sworn she heard a trace of fondness in his voice. "But fear not, you won't have to act so menopausal for much longer. I have good news."

Wendy sat up a little straighter. "And what would that be?"

He sounded bitter here. "Your boyfriend-" The word was ugly, poisonous when Cartman said it. "-checks out. There was practically an orgy in his house and he declined to participate, which means one of two things: either he is an asexual eunuch or he's a slave to _your_ pussy alone, which, considering how insatiable _that _thing is, would make me feel sorry for the guy if I didn't hate him so much."

Wendy blinked, mentally processing the important information among Cartman's mostly irrelevant rant. "So… you found nothing?" she asked for clarification. "Nothing at all?"

"Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. I'm not really sure how I can make this any clearer."

She rested her head against one of the back cushions of the couch and stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out why she wasn't squealing with happiness by now. Most girls would be relieved if they knew their boyfriends weren't cheating or lying to them. All Wendy felt was disappointment. She wondered, not for the first time, why she couldn't be like most girls.

After about a minute, she realized Cartman had begun to hum the 'Jeopardy' theme song. What an ass. "Um… well, thanks, I guess," she finally said. "I'll repay you within the week."

"Good, good," Cartman purred. "Oh, and make sure to tack on something extra to whatever you were originally planning on paying me with. I demand reparations on behalf of Butters, who was molested in the man-boob area by one Clyde Donovan on the night of Token's party, and since the aforementioned sexual assault happened because of you, I am fully prepared to sue your ass for all it's worth if I don't find my reward satisfying." She heard what sounded like numbers being punched into a calculator on the other end. "In this situation, since I doubt you'll be able to repay me in cash, I suggest you reconsider sexual favors. I did the math, and the $1,000 I was originally going to demand of you translate roughly into 3 blowjobs, 2 roleplay sessions, and sex in something other than the missionary position if you go with the Sexual Favors Program. If I was in your shoes, I would do it. Or 'do me', as it were." He chortled.

"Goddammit, Cartman, for the last time, I am _not _some cheap hooker!" she said a little too loudly, if the strange looks her parents were casting her way was any indication.

"I never said you were cheap! You're totally a high-class hooker, like those hot European prostitutes from Amsterdam!" When Wendy huffed indignantly, he switched tactics and whined, "Awww, c'mon, babe! Lend me some sugar; I _am _your neighbor!"

"No, you're not. We don't even live on the same street."

This time, Cartman was the one to huff. "Sheesh. Don't bust a fake tit, bitch. It's, like, a metaphor for sex."

Wendy rolled her eyes. "I'm not stupid, Cartman. I know that."

"Well, you had _me_ fooled."

She didn't say anything in response, just rolled her eyes again, something she found herself doing often around Cartman. There was silence on the other end, broken only by the sound of Cartman's breathing. He always breathed loudly, erratically, even when sitting completely still, like everything was just so intense to him. It was kind of cute, actually. She cleared her throat. "Anyways," she drawled, "This was really fun and all, but I have to get going. My parents now think I'm whoring myself out on the streets."

Cartman laughed. "The truth had to come out sometime." He paused. "Tell them I said 'hi'." And with that last mysterious request, he hung up.

Wendy sat there for a moment, just staring blankly at her cell phone as if she could make Cartman call her back through sheer force of will, then stood up and wandered back to the kitchen in a daze.

Her Dad looked up from his plate of ravioli. "Who was that, sweetie?"

"Eric Cartman," she replied, pulling out a chair and steeling herself for what was to come next. "He says 'hi'."

"Oh, Eric!" her Mom trilled. "What a wonderful boy. I'm so glad that you're still talking to him, sweetie."

"Yeah," her Dad agreed, waving a fork in her direction. "I'm telling you, Wendy, that kid is going places. You would do well to keep in touch with him. In fact, why don't you have him over for dinner this weekend?"

Wendy groaned. "I don't think that's such a good idea, Dad."

Her Mom frowned. "Well, why not?" she wondered. "It went great every other time we had him over."

Wendy could still remember the first time she had Cartman over for dinner. As soon as her parents told her that they wanted to meet him, she had freaked out, deciding that she didn't want to introduce them to a bad boy anymore because she truly valued life and didn't want to be grounded for the remainder of her youth. The whole day leading up to it had Wendy locked in her bedroom, spending half the time feeling like she was going to puke, and the other half threatening to chop off Cartman's dick if he messed up, but all her fears had been for naught. She spent the dinner squeezing Cartman's thigh under the table so hard he later swore that she drew blood, while Cartman used his public speaking skills to completely and effortlessly charm her parents. Things had gone a hundred times better than she ever could've expected. To this day, her parents were _still_ convinced that Eric Cartman was the best thing to happen to the world since the birth of Jesus. Oh, the irony. She turned her eyes skyward, muttering a silent prayer for patience. "We broke up _four years ago_, Mom," she reminded them.

"So?" her Dad said, stuffing some ravioli into his mouth. "That doesn't mean you can't still be friends with him. I was friends with a lot of girls after we decided to call it quits."

Wendy laughed humorlessly. "We don't really have that kind of relationship."

"That's very sad," her Dad said. Mrs. Testaburger nodded.

Wendy tried to eat some ravioli, but found that she had lost her appetite. "Can we not talk about him anymore?" she begged her parents.

They exchanged a look of concern. "Did something happen between you two?" her Mom wondered, then added with narrowed eyes, "You didn't beat him up again, did you?"

"Do we have to call Mrs. Cartman?"

Wendy shoved her plate away angrily. "NO! Nothing happened!" she shouted. It wasn't a lie; not really. Things were still the same as they'd been for the past four years, and _that _was the problem. "I just - it's complicated. You wouldn't understand." She walked into the foyer and pulled her coat and purse off the rack. "I'm going to Bebe's. I'll be back by 10." Without waiting to hear her parents' response, she stomped dejectedly out of the house and to her Honda Civic, almost slipping and cracking her head open on a patch of black ice as she did so. Life was such a bitch sometimes.

When she arrived at Bebe's house and told her best friend that they needed to talk, the other girl responded, "Yeah, alright, I hear you. But first -" she clasped her hands together and pranced over to the TV, pressing her face against the screen, "- We have a Ryan Reynolds marathon."

If it had been anyone else disregarding her problems in favor of watching romantic comedies, Wendy would be pissed beyond belief. But since this was Bebe, and because postponing a serious discussion for 3 hours just so she could eat popcorn and ogle the sexiest man alive was exactly the sort of thing Bebe did on a regular basis, she didn't really mind. They had been friends since Pre-K, after all. Worst things had tried and failed to pull them apart.

"Definitely, Maybe" ended, and Wendy saw possibly her only chance to get a word in edgewise as Bebe scoured her DVD case for the next movie. She pounced on the intermittent silence and launched into a detailed account of the last 2 weeks, starting with her 'dinner-date' at Sizzler and ending with Cartman's recent phone call.

Bebe stewed over this bombardment of fresh information for a few minutes, still flipping through the DVD case, then crossed her arms over her chest and said, "Okay, let me get this straight: you were feeling a little paranoid about where things stood with your current boyfriend - who has never given you a reason to mistrust him in the past - so you hired your sociopathic ex-boyfriend to stalk him, and when your 'inkling' turned out to be completely, 100% off-base, instead of feeling relieved that you were wrong about your current boyfriend being a dirty lying manwhore, you're conflicted because the whole ordeal has reawakened your once-dormant feelings for your ex-boyfriend who, once again, is a complete and total sociopath. Am I right?"

Wendy frowned. "It sounds a lot worse coming from you."

"Everything does, honey," Bebe replied, grinning as she reached for a spiral notebook conveniently located on the coffee table. "We totally need to write all that shit down. This is like major soap-opera material, Wendy. All we gotta do is make Cartman some sexy ethnic hunk and toss in an illegitimate love child and BAM! Daytime television gold."

"I don't appreciate my life crises being turned into fodder for the entertainment of middle-aged women," Wendy grumbled, shooting Bebe a withering glare.

Bebe looked exasperated. "Jesus, Wendy, lighten up. I'm just trying to have some fun."

The brunette sank lower into the couch, resignation replacing her prior chagrin. "I know," she said. "And I'm sorry. It's just… this whole 'Cartman and Token' thing is really bothering me."

"Oooh, I sense you're about to spill some very juicy beans, Wendy," Bebe crowed, lacing her fingers together beneath her chin and smiling intently. "I think I already know what the problem is, but I want to hear it from you."

Wendy looked down at her lap. "You know how, over the years, I've told you repeatedly that I don't have any romantic feelings toward Cartman anymore?" she began, worrying her lower lip.

"How could I forget? You must've told me at least 5 billion times."

"That's ridiculous. I didn't say it _that _many times." Bebe arched one disbelieving eyebrow. Wendy coughed and continued, "Anyway. Those supposed 5 billion times I told you that? Well, I was lying."

Bebe smiled triumphantly, like she'd known all along. She probably had. "So, those 'once-dormant feelings' really weren't so dormant after all, huh?"

Wendy reluctantly shook her head. She hated admitting to this, hated talking about her feelings in general. But if there was one person she could talk to, who would at least _try _to understand, it was Bebe.

"Well, what are you going to do about them?"

Wendy blinked. "About… what?" She really was no good at 'girl talk', and Bebe knew, too, if her rolling eyes were any indication.

"About your uncontrollable lust for Cartman. Obviously."

Wendy rolled her eyes as well. Her lust for Cartman was _completely _under control, thank you very much. "I'm not sure. That's kind of why I came to talk."

"And here I thought you liked me for my personality," Bebe complained, her glossy lips tugging down in an exaggerated frown.

"Oh, don't be dramatic, Bebe. You know what I meant."

"Yeah, I know. You need me to help you with your romantic retardation, and I need you to help me with my Pre-Calc homework. It's a symbiotic relationship." Wendy scowled at the label of 'romantic retardation' that was being attached to her, but it lacked heat. Bebe continued, "Anyway, back to your problem: if you're still so hung up over Cartman, why don't you do us all a favor and just date him again?"

"Um, because I have a boyfriend?" Wendy deadpanned.

"And _I_ used to have a kitty named Mr. Tinkles, but that's irrelevant."

"You're right. That was completely irrelevant. But Token _isn't_." She crossed her arms and glanced away, hoping to look as stubborn as she felt. "I'm not going to be a bitch and dump him for Cartman after all he's done for me. It's just not fair."

"Okay, but is dating one guy while being in love with another really that much more fair?"

Wendy's gaze flicked back to Bebe out of shock. The blonde was looking back at her with equal adamancy, but there was kindness in her eyes, too. Wendy drew her knees up to her chest. "No," she admitted, the words coming out in a sigh. "No, it's not. What should I do?"

Bebe shook her frizzy head. "Sorry, Wends. I can't help you with that part."

Wendy kind of wanted to strangle Bebe right then, kind of wanted to strangle _anyone_, but she knew that her best friend was right. No one could make the decision for her. She had to choose on her own, no matter how much she didn't. And she really, really, really didn't. With a longsuffering groan, she covered her face with her hands. "This sucks," she complained.

"Pretty much," Bebe agreed, sounding far too chipper for their current situation, in Wendy's opinion. "You know what will cheer you up? More mindless rom-coms."

"That's what cheers _you _up, not me," Wendy reminded her, but Bebe was already flipping through the DVD case again. She obediently sat back and watched the next movie with Bebe, but she was only half paying attention to it, the majority of her brain power too focused on her own romantic situation to really give a shit what was happening to the characters on the screen. If she dumped Token and went running back to Cartman, she would lose face. After all, she'd repeatedly lied to Cartman and told him to get over her, and she doubted he would react too kindly to her hypocrisy. He might be so pissed as to not take her back. On the other hand, if she stayed with Token, she would be guaranteed a safe and stable relationship. For all his absentmindedness (i.e., always showing up late for dates), Token was a caring and doting boyfriend. He was the smart choice. But if her feelings for Cartman hadn't disappeared after 4 years, what was the likelihood that they would go away anytime soon?


	12. All At Once

**A/N: **Holy long freakin' chapter, Batman! I think that's pretty much all I have to say, other than I hope you folks like long and dramatic chapters, because that's what you'll be getting here.

Also, next chapter is a major turning point in the story - hint, hint - so be prepared for that.

Reviews make my life.

**Disclaimer: **South Park and all its amazing characters belong to Matt 'n Trey.

**Chapter 11 **

Kenny had a Messiah complex.

He came to this conclusion while lying in bed late one night, staring up at the hated ceiling that he knew too well from it being the first thing he always saw after hundreds upon hundreds of deaths. The thought hadn't been brought on by anything in particular; he'd been unable to sleep, his stomach gurgling with the effort to digest the moldy cheese they'd had for dinner, and his mind started to wander the way minds tend to do when you're suffering from a bad case of food-induced insomnia and boredom. He thought back to the many instances he'd taken the bullet for his friends, both literally and metaphorically. He remembered the way it felt to bash his head in with a conch shell for a religion and a buddy who'd turned their back on him, the brief explosion of pain in the forefront of his skull, the hot gushing of blood before he blacked out. He remembered Stan and Kyle and Cartman waving to him before he was willingly sucked down into the depths of Hell with all the other damned souls. He remembered the long nights spent perched on the tops of buildings, the cool breeze ruffling his cape as he stared unflinchingly at the streets and alleyways of South Park, the sight of a blood-stained silver spike protruding from his chest like he was a piece of meat on some fucked up kebab.

He didn't know _why _he had always done it, why he still did it, why he would probably continue to do it for the rest of his miserable existence. It wasn't like anyone ever remembered his sacrifices. But in a sick, masochistic sort of way, he _liked _it. It made him feel better about himself. Because even though no one would remember it, he wanted to feel like he'd somehow made a difference in the world. Kenny had been born poor and raised to think that he couldn't ever make a change; that things would always stay the same and you couldn't do anything about it. He liked proving everybody wrong, even if he was the only person he received validation from.

The Messiah complex, he realized, was also the reason he agreed to go out with Butters. Sure, part of it was because Butters was genuinely a good person and a friend who he held in high regard. But more than that - even though it was subconscious at the time - when Kenny learned of Butters' mental problems, his view of him shifted. He no longer saw just a friend. He saw someone fairly close to him who needed to be saved, and Kenny wanted to be his savior. The whole relationship started with his instinctual desire to rescue people, and although he was sure it still partially motivated his actions, the way he felt for Butters now was more than just his Messiah complex speaking.

He didn't think the Messiah complex had anything to do with the way his whole mind and body seemed to relax around Butters. He didn't think it was why, when they were walking through the forest together and Butters pointed out some 'mistletoe', he suspended his disbelief because he secretly wanted an excuse to kiss him. He sure as hell didn't think some weird-ass hero complex was the reason why his heart did a pleasant little jig when Butters pressed their noses together in an Eskimo kiss, and fuck, why did he enjoy that so much anyway? Eskimo kisses were corny as hell, but he liked it when Butters did it. He liked a lot of things Butters did.

There were The Feelings (caps totally necessary) and The Complex, and sometimes it was hard to differentiate between the two, although lately he was leaning more towards The Feelings. It was The Feelings that made him practically overturn his tiny house in search of money, The Feelings that drove him to offer to take over some of Kevin's drug-dealing duties in exchange for a cut of the cash (though The Complex put an end to that). He had been joking when he told his parents that he was going to rape a Coinstar up the ass for some spare change, but he actually _would _consider it if he thought it would work, and his Dad obviously thought so because he gave him an extra strength condom and some advice on "how to not lose yer pecker in the machine", speaking of course from personal experience.

Eventually, he was able to scrape together $15 a couple days before Christmas, and the only thing that remained was the big question: what the fuck was he going to spend it on? Kenny had never had a boyfriend or girlfriend long enough to warrant gift-giving, and Christmases at the McCormick household weren't exactly typical, so he lacked in the whole experience department. He thought about going the SNL route and giving Butters his "Dick in a Box", because it was the most romantic Christmas song _ever _in his opinion, but he remembered that he was in a self-imposed temporary state of celibacy and Butters would probably have a heart attack or say something like, "Gee, that's awful nice of you, Kenny, but my parents will ground me if I get a dick in a box for Christmas!". He could practically hear Butters saying it in his head. It was hilarious.

So, instead, he decided to do things the old-fashioned way: gift shopping. He (illegally, since he had never even gone through Driver's Ed.) drove his newly-fixed-but-still-a-certifiable-piece-of-crap car downtown and stopped at Jim's Drugs RX, since the mall was too expensive and Jim's was the only all-purpose store in South Park. The jingling change in the pocket of his orange hoodie - orange, orange, why was his wardrobe so damn orange? - filled him with satisfaction as he sauntered out of the cold and into the warm store.

"Can I help you with anything?" the clerk asked after a few minutes of searching.

Kenny stopped next to a box of candy. "Nah, I'm just looking around," he replied, somewhat distractedly. Reese's, M&Ms, Snickers, Twix… Butterfinger! Kenny grinned and grabbed three from the box. Butters _loved _Butterfingers, funnily enough. He wasn't sure if that's how Butters had gotten his nickname, but he was just glad that, if nothing else, he was able to get him his favorite candy for Christmas.

He slunk up and down the aisles, scanning each of them carefully for anything that might be of interest to Butters and ignoring the burning glare of the clerk on his back. Teenager? Check. Poor as shit? Check. Those two things, when put together, made most storeowners wary of Kenny. You got used to it after awhile, even though their assumptions were grossly off-base. He wondered how that asshole would react if he knew that Kenny had been the one to stop his store from getting robbed and ransacked four years back. Maybe then he'd be less quick to stereotype.

With the exception of the Butterfingers, Kenny didn't really find much that was gift-worthy. He supposed that it was because he was trying to do Christmas shopping _in a drug store_, but a small part of him had hoped, perhaps stupidly, that he would be able to find something that screamed 'Butters' to him amongst all the cheap pharmaceutical crap. He gave a longsuffering sigh and wandered back to the front of the store, fingers hollowly tracing the outline of money in his pocket. Butters had told him not to stress himself out over it. _Easy for _you _to say_, Kenny thought drolly, _You already know what you're getting me_. The more he thought about it, the more defeated he felt, and the more his skills as a boyfriend seemed to plummet.

Disheartened, Kenny made his way back to the check-out and placed the three Butterfingers on the counter. While the clerk rang up the candy, Kenny rocked back and forth on his heels and turned his attention to a small music box behind the cash register. It was baby blue with darker navy stars all over, the paint chipping off in some places, and a small silver hand-crank on the side. He turned to the clerk, intrigued. "Hey, what song does that play?" he asked.

The clerk raised a bushy eyebrow. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Why?"

Kenny's gaze flicked back to the music box, feeling the metaphorical light bulb going off over his head. He knew that blue was Butters' favorite color and that he loved stars _and _music, especially nursery rhymes, so it would make sense for him to totally eat up a blue 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' music box. It made sense to Kenny, at least. Feeling hope resurging in his chest, he curled his gloved hands around the edge of the counter and looked to the clerk. "Well, I'd kinda like to buy it. How much does it cost?"

The older man's gaze hardened. "It's not for sale."

"What? That's bullshit!" Kenny cried. _Why even have it in your store if it's not for sale? _was the unspoken second half of the statement, but Kenny didn't want to come across as too much of a smartass. He was pretty sure that snarky wit was not going to earn him any brownie points with a guy like this.

"Tough titties, kid." He punched some numbers into the cash register. "That'll be $3.99."

Kenny shoved his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie, but didn't pull the money out. He was still too fixated on the music box. It might not seem like much to most people, but at the moment, it was practically the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts to him. He took a deep breath. "Look, sir, I'm trying to find a gift for my… um… my special someone." He inwardly cringed. God, that sounded cheesy. But, well, how _else _could he have said it? 'Hey, man, I'm poor and desperate and trying to find a gift for my boyfriend - yeah, I said _boy_friend - that will make me seem a little less poor and desperate, and I kind of actually like him a lot so please give me the fucking music box already'? He didn't think that would go over too well.

The clerk gave him an appraising look. "How much money do you got?"

"Um." Kenny did the math in his head. "$11, sir."

He laughed harshly. "$11? That," he jerked his thumb in the direction of the music box, "has been passed down in my family for generations. I'm not pawning it off to some hoodlum for 11 bucks."

Kenny looked out the window at the snowflakes falling thickly to the ground. "I'll shovel your sidewalk for a week."

"Deal."

Kenny's eyes widened a fraction of an inch. Sometimes he forgot how stupid the adults in his town could be, even though he had arguably the two stupidest ones for parents. His surprise quickly subsided and joy took its place. "Woohoo!" he cheered, slapping his pathetic wad of cash on the table and reining in the urge to do a celebratory dance.

The clerk gave him the music box and Butterfingers and Kenny practically ripped them right out of his hands (he blamed his upbringing as the middle child in a lower class family for _that _one). "Thanks!" he said, grinning, as he pocketed the change and ran out of the store. _That wasn't so bad, _he thought to himself, flipping up his hood against the bitterly cold wind. He wasn't looking forward to shoveling snow for a week, but it wouldn't be the worst thing he'd ever done for money. At least this time he felt like it was worth the struggle.

He hurried into the car and turned the ignition, watching his breath roll out on white clouds. While the old red Volvo warmed up - a process that could take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, depending on how much of a stubborn ass the car felt like being that day - he inspected his new purchase. He thought Butters would like it. He _hoped _Butters would like it, even though it was probably more like something you would get for a baby and not a boyfriend. His curiosity getting the better of him, he slowly turned the crank and listened to the simple xylophonic melody that poured out of the box. The tune was sweet and childish on the surface, but when he paid closer attention to it, he could hear every little individual note and nuance and realized that it was actually pretty complex, just like Butters. He smiled fondly when the song came to an end and set the box in the passenger seat. Picturing Butters' reaction to it made his stomach flop, but Kenny didn't think much of it. It was probably just the moldy cheese.

* * *

This was quickly shaping up to be the worst Christmas Eve of Cartman's life.

Mostly, it was because this would be the first year he had not gone on some super awesome Christmas adventure with Stan, Kyle, and Kenny. He had called up the first two a couple hours ago to ask of their plans, and they had told him (very rudely, in his opinion) that yes, they weregoing to find Mr. Hankey _by themselves_, and _no_, it was not a goddamn date, Cartman, what kind of fucked up people go on a date to find a magical piece of crap in the sewers? ("The ass-spelunking kind," Cartman had replied, and then Kyle promptly hung up on him.) After that debacle, he called Kenny, but Kenny was too busy fagging it up with Butters to indulge in any wicked heterosexual adventures. He was starting to regret that he'd ever set them up in the first place. The whole point of forcing Kenny and Butters into a faux relationship was to make both of them every bit as miserable as he was, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect. They were always around each other, so happy it was disgusting, and Stan and Kyle were similarly obsessed with 'playing house', which left Cartman, in effect, friendless.

He shoveled another piece of pumpkin pie into his mouth and watched _A Christmas Story _for the third time that week. _So what_, he tried to tell himself. _Those losers can fuck in the sewers 'til the cows come home. I'm having TONS of fun all by myself. _The thought repeated over and over in his head like a scratched record, and he made sure to savor each bite of pie and laugh extra loud at every funny scene in hopes that he could trick his brain into believing it was true. Cartman had become a master of delusion over the years. Sometimes, he could delude himself into thinking he had a chance of getting back together with Wendy, but those were few and far between and they didn't last for very long.

The quiet hum of purring broke into Ralphie's narration and Cartman glanced down just in time to see Mr. Kitty surreptitiously lapping at the whipped cream on his paper plate. "No, kitty!" Cartman rebuked, cuffing the cat upside the head. "That's _mah _pumpkin pah!"

Mr. Kitty obediently ducked away from the food, then hopped onto the back of the couch and licked the side of Cartman's face. He cracked a wobbly smile at the rough sensation. Smiling always felt weird to him, like the expression didn't quite fit on his face. He thought that whoever said "it takes more muscles to frown than to smile" was an idiot. Frowning was way easier.

While Mr. Kitty continued to shower him with feline affection, the rustic chime of the doorbell suddenly rang out. Cartman glanced at it with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. Who the hell would want to come to his house on Christmas Eve? He supposed that maybe Stan and Kyle had realized that a Christmas special just wasn't a Christmas special without their festively pump friend, but they were too big of douchebags to ever admit to it so that seemed unlikely. It didn't occur to him until a couple of minutes after the doorbell rang that it would be a hell of a lot easier to just open the door and _see _who it was instead of running circles in his head trying to figure it out. Growling at his own stupidity, he rolled off the couch and opened the door.

And immediately slammed it shut upon seeing who was standing on the other side.

He pressed his back against the door, heart racing and eyes wild like an animal's. Why was Wendy, of all people, visiting him? And why the hell did he have to pick today, of all days, to wear an ugly sweater? He took a deep breath and wiped away some lingering pumpkin pie crumbs from his mouth before cautiously reopening the door.

As expected, Wendy looked pissed, but Wendy pretty much always looked pissed around him. She had different levels of pissiness: Mildly Pissed, On the Rag, Crazy-Ass Bitch Mode, and worst of all, Satan's Mistress. Right now, she looked like she was on the cusp of Mildly Pissed and On the Rag. Not too bad.

He tore his eyes away from her irritated face and let them roam up and down her body. Long curtains of sleek black hair tumbled over a plaid purple coat, below which were plain jeans and boots. She looked beautiful. She always looked beautiful, actually, and she did it all without showing any skin, unlike most girls at his school who wore tank tops and booty shorts even when it was colder than a witch's tit outside. Not that he would mind if she dressed more revealingly. He was a dude. He'd be fucking _stoked_. But he'd be the only one to get to see her that way, of course.

She cleared her throat, drawing Cartman's attention back to her face. She looked expectant. He realized she was probably waiting for him to say something. "It's 8:00 on a Friday night. Shouldn't you be working the corner right now, ho?" he asked, turning his nose up snootily.

One of her hands, formerly clasped behind her back, darted out to slap him across the face. It wasn't hard enough to hurt, but Cartman still whined, "OW! God_damn_it, bitch, what the hell was _that _for? All I'm saying is there's plenty of lonely, horny sleazeballs out there who would pay good money to bone jailbait dressed as elves on Christmas Eve. You need to capitalize on that shit!"

"Right. And I'll be capitalizing on the next opportunity to kick your ass if you slam the door in my face again," Wendy retorted.

Cartman rubbed his wounded cheek. "'Ey, I was surprised, okay? Jesus, you never give me a break."

Wendy's expression softened somewhat. "Sorry. I would've called, but you never pick up the phone."

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Okay, fahn, then. Name _one _time you called and I didn't pick up the phone. One time. Go ahead. I dare you." He clasped his hands together. "_Enlighten _me, Wendy."

Wendy tapped her heel against the porch and looked up and away, apparently deep in thought. "God, there were _so _many times, I can't pick just one…" Cartman glared at her, but she didn't seem to notice, and if she did, she didn't acknowledge it. Bitch. "Alright, I've got one: Homecoming Dance, 8th grade. I left you four messages when you didn't show up after an hour, and I even went to your house to make sure you hadn't passed out or something. You weren't there, but your phone was. You know where I found it? At the bottom of your underwear drawer."

Cartman crossed his arms. "Please. I was tracking down Steven Spielberg in deep space with my faggy friends. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten service outside our galaxy." He paused. "You went through my underwear drawer? …That's creepy as fuck. But kind of hot, too. I think."

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Trust me, it wasn't. It really, _really _wasn't."

"Sure, you say that _now_, but you were totally creaming yourself at the opportunity to touch my gloriously sexy undergarments back then. Admit it."

Wendy's eyebrow twitched. "There's nothing glorious or sexy about boxers and briefs. Especially yours. If I _ever_ have to do that again, it'll be too soon."

Cartman gave a noncommittal grunt and shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. He wondered if she'd react the same way had it been Token's unmentionables she was sifting through, instead of his. "Well _I_ didn't sit on my ass eating bonbons all day, either," he snapped. "Or have you forgotten all the times I ran to the store at, like, 3 AM to get you tampons and painkillers and other woman-crap? I practically cut off my balls for you, hippie. Cut them _right _off. Snip, snip."

"Thanks for the mental image, Cartman," Wendy muttered, grimacing. "And anyways, buying 'woman-crap' - that's really sexist, by the way - wasn't exactly corporal punishment. You'd done it plenty of times before we even started going out."

Cartman snorted derisively. "When have I ever done that, except for that one time?" Wendy opened her mouth to rattle off a list of counterexamples, but Cartman quickly amended, "I was a weird kid, okay?"

He expected Wendy to make a biting, acerbic comment, or insult him at the very least, but she did neither. She smiled for the first time since their conversation started. "I prefer the term 'eccentric'," she said, shrugging, and he really hoped he wasn't just imagining the affection that colored her voice.

He felt his own face light up with a crooked smile. "Eccentric? Okay. Yeah, I think I like that." And that's when his brain decided to check out and he just stood there and grinned at her like an idiot, and he didn't speak because his tongue felt cottony and gross and he didn't want to say the wrong thing and make Wendy hate him again. Did she still hate him? She didn't look like she did. He hoped she didn't.

"Eric, poopsiekins, please close the door! You're letting a draft in!"

Cartman whirled around to see his mother standing in the junction between the kitchen and the living room, dressed in an incredibly slutty Santa outfit. He felt his face flush with chagrin. "Goddammit, Mom, just wait a minute! I'm talking to Wendy right now!" he exclaimed, then added as an afterthought, "…And put on some fucking clothes, you're embarrassing me!"

"Alright, sweetie, I'll get changed." She craned her neck. "Hello, Wendy!"

Wendy waved. "Hello, Mrs. Cartman!" she greeted, smiling perfunctorily.

Cartman frowned. He couldn't have his Mom and Wendy engaging in conversation. This was _his _chance to win her over, dammit! "_Moooooooom_, go upstairs," he ordered. Luckily, his Mom didn't give him any guff, just laughed and subserviently ascended the stairs. Once she was gone, Cartman turned back to Wendy. "I apologize for my Mom. She can't help the fact that she's a raging whore." He paused, looking down at his socks. "Why are you here?" he finally asked.

Wendy shifted. "That's right, I almost forgot," she said, chuckling. Cartman loved her laugh. He almost wished he had it on a tape recorder or something, so he could listen to it whenever he wanted. "As much as I like reminiscing, I'm actually here to repay you."

"…So you _are _going to have sex with me?" Cartman guessed, an edge of optimism in his words.

Wendy shot him a deadpan look. "Um, no." Blushing almost imperceptibly in the awkward silence that followed, she moved her hands out from behind her back to present a Saran-wrapped plate of Oreos. Not just Oreos; _quadruple-stuffed Oreos_. Cartman could've came in his pants right then and there. "I'd pay you in cash, but I don't have a job right now. Is this okay?"

"It's more than okay," Cartman enthused. He took the plate from her outstretched hands, delighting in the way their fingers brushed for a millisecond. "It's kickass! Seriouslah, I've been craving these like a pregnant chick lately. You… You fucking _rule_."

Wendy smiled. "You _better _like them. I think I got carpal tunnel from pulling apart so many cookies." She hesitantly reached out to pat him on the arm, allowing her touch to linger for a moment, then stepped back. "Merry Christmas, Eric. I'll see you after break."

He grabbed her hand before it could fall away. She stopped, glancing down at their linked hands with trepidation, then back up at him. At least she didn't try to pull free. That was a good start. In the past, when he'd try to touch her, she would recoil as if she'd been burnt. He always hated when that happened. "I can't eat these all by myself," he said, swallowing thickly.

Wendy looked at him like he'd just grown another head. "Of course you can. I've seen you eat a whole buffet table before."

Cartman growled. "That's not what I meant. I'm trying to be nice. Now get in my house, dammit!" He realized that telling Wendy to 'get in his house' was probably detrimental to his niceness, and for a moment she appeared as if she was going to jerk her hand away, but she didn't. Instead, she looked down at their hands again and heaved a defeated sigh.

"I'm supposed to be having Token over later," she told him.

"That black asshole can wait. He's probably too busy making sweet musical love to his bass guitar to give a fuck what you're doing, anyway." Wendy sent him a glare that suggested if she still had the plate of Oreos in her hands, she'd be smashing it over his head. Cartman switched tactics. "I'm not going to throw you in my basement and have my wild way with you or something. Unless you want me to, 'cause that could be pretty sweet. My Mom has a bondage kit in the closet where she keeps all my Christmas presents."

Wendy made a face. "I really didn't want to know that. But… I guess I can stay." Cartman pumped his fist victoriously. "Only for a few minutes, though. Don't get ahead of yourself."

"Too late," Cartman lilted, lightly tugging Wendy inside the house and ignoring her exasperated utterance of "Jesus Christ". He let go of her hand, since his own were getting clammy and he didn't want her to notice how nervous he actually was, and pulled the door shut behind them. Step 1 of Winning Wendy Back: Get Her in the House, now completed.

He watched as she slowly wandered into the living room, her brown eyes surveying the messy space littered with plates, empty cups, and boxes of Christmas decorations. She was strangely silent. Cartman was puzzled at her introspection until he remembered that she hadn't been in this room for four years. Weird. "I love what you've done with the place," she finally said, smirking.

Cartman shoved a bunch of nondescript crap off the couch and sat down. "Heh, thanks. I decorated the Christmas tree." He gestured to the balsam fir in the corner of the room, adorned with crooked popcorn strands, broken multicolored lights, and several anti-Semitic ornaments (his favorite was the one of Kyle impaled on a menorah). If Santa could see it, he'd probably orgasm all over the place from sheer awesomeness. It was just that damn cool.

"I can tell because it's horribly offensive," Wendy remarked, sitting down next to him so that they had a good few inches of space between them.

Cartman hid his disappointment at the lack of physical contact behind a self-assured grin. "Good, 'cause that's what I was going for. Offensiveness is my design signature. I call it 'The Cartman Touch'." He fanned his hands and fingers out in a dramatic flourish.

Wendy hummed to herself and continued to stare at the Christmas tree. Cartman wasn't sure if it was just because she was enamored with his decorating skills, or she really didn't want to look at him. Fine. Two could play at that game. He looked at the TV to see that _A Christmas Story _had ended and the channel was now playing _It's a Wonderful Life_.

"Hey." He nudged Wendy and pointed at the screen with a remote. "Isn't this one of your favorite movies?"

Her gaze flicked to him (score!) and then turned to the TV, a radiant smile lighting up her features almost immediately. "I _love _this movie!" she exclaimed. "It's such a classic. I watch it every Christmas." After a few seconds, her lips pulled down in a frown and she looked at him again, eyebrows drawn together in bewilderment. "How did you know it's one of my favorite movies? I don't remember ever telling you about it."

Cartman shrugged with forced nonchalance. "You mentioned it a couple times. Believe it or not, I remember tons of meaningless crap like that about you." He peeled the Saran wrap cover off the plate of Oreos. "For example: you want to someday be a vegan, but you hate broccoli and asparagus. You like music, especially the shitty, obscure indie kind, but you don't go to concerts because the people there are always doing drugs and drugs give you a sandy vagina. If you ever met Glenn Beck in person, you would - and I quote - 'make him eat his own fucking shit'. There's more, but these Oreos are really distracting me. Want one?"

He held one out to her, but she wasn't looking at the Oreo. She was staring at him with an expression he couldn't quite place. If he didn't know better, he'd think she was about to cry, but that would be ridiculous. Her lips were parted slightly, indicating shock - he wanted to kiss them, so, _so _badly, but he checked the impulse. It would only make things worse. Maybe, though, it would get her to stop looking at him like that. The longer she did it, the more uncomfortable he became with the subject. "But, you know, I remember tons of meaningless crap about _everything_, not just you," he continued with a superior sniff. "I have super intense photographic memory. Like, I can remember the 9 months spent in my mother's womb. I have a whole section on it in my autobiography, _Respecting Authority: The Life & Times of Eric T. Cartman_. Isn't that cooooo'?"

Wendy plucked the Oreo from his fingers and turned her head away, but not before Cartman saw her face fall. She looked disappointed. Had he said something wrong? "That _is _cool," she agreed, humoring him. She took a bite of the Oreo. "I didn't know you were writing a book."

"I am indeed," he said honestly. "Kahl bet me 20 bucks that I couldn't write a bestselling autobiography by the end of junior year, and I'm determined to prove him wrong."

Wendy nodded and laughed to herself, like there was some funny joke inside her head that he wasn't privy to. "I'm almost afraid to ask, since my portrayals in your _other _books have been less than flattering, but… am I in it at all?"

Cartman could've cracked up at that. The idea of Wendy not being in his autobiography was downright preposterous. If he was better at articulating his thoughts, he'd tell her that she was one of the main characters of his life, a key component in his story, the plot point that influenced every other event that followed their relationship. But Cartman had never been good at expressing his feelings in a constructive way, so he settled with, "Hell yeah. There's an entire chapter just about you."

Wendy seemed pleased with that answer, at least for a few seconds. Then she just looked suspicious. "How many chapters are about Kyle?"

Cartman rubbed his chin pensively. "7.5," he replied.

He immediately regretted the answer because in the blink of an eye, Wendy had crossed the threshold from On the Rag into Crazy-Ass Bitch Mode. "We were in a serious romantic relationship for 6 months and I get one measly chapter," she began through gritted teeth. "You _hate _Kyle, and he gets seven! What the fuck?"

Cartman didn't bother correcting her on the fact that it was 7_.5_, not just seven, because she had that insane look in her eyes that made him feel like he was going to piss his pants and Wendy _despised _being corrected. She'd always been jealous of Kyle and Butters for reasons that Cartman never quite understood. Sure, he'd put Butters' penis in his mouth once or twice, and he was still eagerly awaiting the day when Kyle sucked his balls, but that didn't mean he was _gay _for them. Was that really such a hard concept to grasp? "Yeah, that's right, bitch. Kahl gets more chapters than you, but yours is the longest one in the whole damn book and my editor says it's the most emotionally affecting, so yeah!" Cartman retorted.

Wendy was boasting that expression again, the one he couldn't quite place. He wondered if she could tell how hard it was for him to write that chapter, how dredging up all those memories and putting them onto paper was probably the most exhausting experience of his life. Her eyes flickered with unspoken questions and maybe a touch of understanding. "Who's your editor?" she asked.

Cartman blinked. That was _all _she'd gotten out of his impassioned declaration? One little offhanded mention about his editor? He couldn't help but be slightly disappointed. "Clyde Frog. But Butters does all the proofreading because Clyde Frog sucks ass at grammar."

"Clyde Frog? The… the stuffed animal?" Wendy's voice quavered with a restrained giggle.

"Yes," Cartman affirmed sullenly. "Are you discriminating against stuffed animals, ho?"

Wendy didn't try to hide her amusement this time. "Aww, Eric Cartman still plays with stuffed animals," she cooed, reaching over to pinch one of his flabby cheeks.

Cartman's face reddened as he batted Wendy's hand away. "Whatever," he growled, trying to maintain what little semblance of dignity he had left. Wendy gave another musical laugh and leaned back against the couch, turning her attention to the black and white scene playing out on the TV as they slipped into a comfortable silence, broken only by dialogue between the characters and the crunching of Oreos. He watched it, too, but every few seconds he would sneak a glance at her. If he didn't know better, he'd say that she was happy. It was funny (and occasionally annoying) how Wendy could go from content to pissed off and back to content in the span of two minutes. It was like she was in a perpetual state of PMS.

An idea popped into his head and he leaned over the arm of the couch, feeling around on the carpet until he found what he was looking for. When he sat up straight again, holding the item behind his back, Wendy was watching him with both eyebrows arched expectantly. "Do you remember how I got you to kiss me for the first time when we started dating?" he quizzed her.

Wendy's confusion melted into recognition. "Kind of," she said. "All I remember is that it didn't happen until 2 weeks after I asked you out. I'm not sure why. What did you do, again?"

He pushed away the familiar prickle of disappointment and revealed to her the Clyde Frog doll. "'Hey, Wendy,'" he spoke out of the corner of his mouth, flopping one of Clyde Frog's green arms at her, "'You should totally kiss Cartman 'cause he likes you a lot, even though you piss each other off sometimes.' Remember that?"

Wendy grinned. "Oh, I do, now. You're lucky I thought that was really cute. I might've never kissed you if you hadn't pulled _that _one on me."

Cartman returned the grin, albeit more cockily. "Yeah, uh huh," he snorted. "You were just hella scared I would kiss you so passionately that your lips would burn off from the hotness."

"I think I was more afraid that your bigotry was like a disease transmittable through saliva," Wendy replied, rolling her eyes good-naturedly.

Cartman made a face. "Charming," he drawled, pushing aside the plate of Oreos and scooting closer to Wendy as furtively as possible.

She glanced down at the slightly-lessened space between them and looked away again, staring at the TV screen with a newfound sense of resolve. "So, um. You were lucky it worked," she repeated, crossing her legs primly. Her tone of voice, which sounded more ornery than before, and the thoughtful crinkle of her forehead suggested she was trying to convince herself more than anything.

Cartman continued to watch her for a moment and then looked down at the stuffed animal in his hands, studying the faded green material and the stitches around the neck from when he'd had to sew Clyde Frog's head back on. The air between him and Wendy was thick with unspoken words and unresolved feelings. He hated it so much. He wanted to tell her everything, just to get it out in the open, but the words wouldn't come out. They were jammed in his throat, making him gag, like the time he'd won a hot dog-eating competition at the Park County fair and puked on the nearest available carny afterwards. That was what he needed to do: he had to vomit his feelings all over Wendy. God, he was a poetic genius!

"Would it work on you again?" he asked, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

Wendy looked at him, slowly, carefully, like she was trying to discern whether he was being serious. "I… I don't know," she answered, and he could tell she was being truthful because there was a strong undertone of shame in her words. She was ashamed at the possibility that she might still have some feelings for him. Cartman wasn't surprised, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

He cleared his throat. "'Wendy,'" he began, speaking out of the corner of his mouth and holding out the Clyde Frog doll again, "'Cartman's a jackass so he can't say this to your face, but he really wishes you would kiss him and maybe even go out with him again 'cause he still likes you a lot, but it's okay if you don't want to. He'd still be friends with you 'cause he thinks you're totally sweet - for a chick - and he misses talking to you and he would do anything to just be around you, even if it's not in the way he wants.'" He looked away, feeling his throat constricting and his hands growing sweaty. "Or something super faggy like that."

Cartman was aware of how pathetic and probably unintentionally humorous this whole situation was. What kind of loser used a stuffed animal as a mouthpiece to confess their feelings for a girl? He wouldn't blame her if she laughed. Hell, if their roles were reversed, _he'd _probably be laughing his ass off. But Wendy knew him better than anyone else and he knew she knew that he had serious communication problems and that this was his only way of expressing himself without being scared shitless. If anybody could understand, it was her.

He stared down at the ground, fearful of her reaction as the silence stretched on between them. Eventually, her hand descended on his shoulder, but he still didn't look up. "Was all that true?" he heard her say. He gave a tiny nod of his head. "So… you're not joking? You didn't say that just to mess with me?" He shook his head vigorously. He joked about a lot of things - everything, really - but not that. Never.

She placed two fingers under his chin, tilting his head up, and that's when it happened: _he was kissing Wendy_. No; _Wendy_ was kissing _him_, softly, gently, so sweetly it almost fucking _burned _but he was too busy being happy to focus on that for very long. He pressed back hesitantly, not daring to deepen the kiss for fear that it would push Wendy away. His calloused fingers, shaking with elation and reverence, skated across her cheek with a touch that was feather-light, like they couldn't believe they would ever be able to touch Wendy again. And God, it was perfect. She was just like he remembered. She still felt the same, tasted the same, and smelled the same. She was still perfect, and her kiss could still make him feel like he was melting and exploding at the same time, collapsing in on himself like a star. He wanted to kiss her forever.

But then the light pressure on his lips was suddenly gone and when his eyes reluctantly opened, he didn't see his own satisfaction mirrored in Wendy's eyes, which were slowly widening as the post-kiss haze lifted and realization dawned upon her. He heard her breath hitch as she abruptly pulled away from him, off the couch in an instant. She looked like she'd just witnessed a murder.

"I- Eric, I… I'm sorry." Her voice was taut, a dam holding back the rising flood of emotions. "This is all my fault. I shouldn't have… shouldn't have kissed you. It was a mistake."

Cartman's heart, which had been practically palpitating with joy moments earlier, suddenly plummeted. He could feel his mouth moving, but no words would come out. They were all jammed in his throat again.

"I'm not being fair to you _or_ Token by being around you, Eric," she continued, the red and green and blue lights of the Christmas tree reflected in her bright, sad eyes. "Every time we're with each other, this kind of stuff happens, and I just can't let it go on any longer. I want to be strong, but, well…" She smiled, but it was miserable. "You're my weakness."

And then she wasn't looking at him anymore, her eyes unfocused and trained on something in the middle-distance. She was probably too repulsed by him; him, the human embodiment of all her failures, regrets, and mistakes. That's all he'd ever be: a mistake.

She said something else to him before she left, but Cartman didn't hear it. He couldn't even find it in himself to be heartbroken. He was catatonic, too numb to feel the grief that would've normally settled in the pit of his stomach like a leaden weight by now. Maybe his heart had just gotten sick of it; _fuck this dumbass and fuck that bitch he's so stupidly in love with_, he imagined his heart declaring as it waltzed right out of his chest, leaving him hollow and emotionless. He didn't blame it. He remembered what his shop teacher had told him last year when he'd broken his final project (three times) and tried to fruitlessly piece it back together with superglue: "If you keep breaking something, eventually there'll be nothing you can do to fix it."

He grabbed one of the 3 remaining Oreos and closed his hand around it, crushing it until the pieces of black wafer dug into his skin. Nothing. He slammed his fist down on another one, pretending it was Token's face. Still nothing. He didn't touch the last one, just watched as Mr. Kitty swooped upon the scene to devour it, and then glanced at the ridiculously-peppy pine tree that seemed to be mocking him.

"Merry fucking Christmas," he grumbled to himself, and the more he thought about his situation, about his shitty Christmas Eve, about the dozens of times he'd tried to make Wendy feel even a fraction of love for him as he did for her to no avail, the more his numbness became tinged with grim understanding. He'd been playing by the rules for too long. Maybe that was his problem; maybe he'd have to break the rules a bit to get Wendy back. 'All is fair in love and war', or some shit like that. If there was anything he'd learned tonight, it was that Wendy _did _still have feelings for him, but they were eclipsed by her loyalty to Token. Token. Therein lied the problem. If Token and Wendy were no longer dating, then that would only leave him. But Wendy was a Good Girl, and Token was the Right Choice, and that meant that she would always choose Token.

So he would just have to make Token break up with Wendy.

* * *

Kenny had almost forgotten what it felt like to _not _be Butters' boyfriend.

Okay, so maybe that was a stretch. He'd spent 16 years and 9 months of his life not being Butters' boyfriend, and only 1 month dating him, so there wasn't even any comparison. But over the past month, he'd grown so used to the rhythm they'd fallen into that he took their interactions as a couple for granted.

It was Christmas Eve and he was currently sitting at the Stotches' dinner table, seated all by himself at one end with Stephen and Linda directly across from him and Butters kitty-corner. The unusual arrangement made him feel like he was at an interrogation table. (Not that he'd ever been to jail, or even juvy; he just watched a lot of crime dramas.) The questions that were being continuously volleyed at him only added to the feeling that he was being put on the spot, and every once in a while he caught himself clutching at his throat, feeling around for the drawstrings to tighten his hood and block himself off from the world… but then he remembered, oh yeah, he'd given his parka to Butters, and he probably looked like a retard right now because he was groping at thin air every 3 minutes.

He was operating under the illusion that he and Butters were just friends, which was a hell of a lot more difficult than he'd originally assumed it would be. "You'll be fine," Butters had assured him over the phone hours earlier, and he sounded so confident that Kenny couldn't _not _believe it. After all, they'd only been together for a month, and Kenny hadn't decided that he had definite romantic feelings for Butters until a little over a week ago, so how hard could it be to act like he wasn't interested in him?

The answer: really fucking hard, actually. Butters had evidently taken a shower before Kenny arrived because his blond hair was still damp and fluffy and he smelled _really _good, and to top it off, he looked much more mature than usual in the dress shirt he was wearing. And when Butters looked mature, he also looked hot. And when Butters looked hot, Kenny couldn't really focus on his food or the conversational questions that Butters' parents were asking him. He snuck occasional glances in Butters' direction, and half the time he found Butters looking back at him - or, at least, the space between them. His lower lip would stick out in a slight pout as he scrutinized the foot or so of air that separated them, like he couldn't figure out for the life of him _why _it was there but he just knew that he didn't like it. This only made Kenny want to kiss him even more.

He wasn't sure, but he thought that things were going pretty good so far. No celebrities had shown up yet, and he hadn't died, but he _had _come close. Long story short, Mr. and Mrs. Stotch had asked Kenny a question about his family and he had stumbled over the answer, so Butters tried to reassuringly squeeze his leg under the table but had misjudged the distance and grabbed Kenny's crotch instead. Kenny also just happened to be taking a sip of his Coke at the time it happened, and he'd been so surprised at the touch that he spilled some pop on the table and nearly choked on an ice cube, while Butters just sat there, red-faced and frozen with utter mortification. But besides that little slip-up, Kenny believed that he and Butters had done a nice job of convincing Mr. and Mrs. Stotch that they were nothing more than good friends. The whole ordeal made him appreciate his own parents a lot more; they didn't really give a shit who Kenny dated, unlike Butters' parents, who knew he was gay but still forbade him from having a boyfriend. Kenny thought that was a load of crap. Butters deserved to be happy and accepted for who he was, just like everyone else.

After a little over half an hour, once they had all finished their food, Butters scooted out his chair and loudly announced that he and Kenny were going to "fool around in the snow for a while". This announcement was met with a flinch from Kenny, dumbfounded gapes from Mr. and Mrs. Stotch, and an oblivious grin from Butters - who apparently had no idea that he'd just implied that he and Kenny were about to go outside and do the nasty. Kenny was torn between laughing his ass off and shriveling up from secondhand embarrassment, but he forgot all about the incident as soon as he went outside and found himself being gently pinned to the wall and kissed by Butters. All the tension he'd built up over the course of the evening evaporated as Butters' lips moved hungrily against his, exuding passion with every stroke of his tongue and _oh my God_, Butters was using tongue? Fucking _awesome_. But Butters' motions still seemed timid and conservative and Butters-y (Kenny's new favorite word) and his hands, cupped around Kenny's face, were kind of shaking, so Kenny hooked his thumbs in Butters' belt loops and tugged him forward until their hips were brushing to show him that he wholeheartedly approved of what Butters was doing. "Holy fuck," Kenny breathed when Butters finally broke off the kiss.

Butters looked at his feet meekly. "Sorry," he mumbled, his tiny chest rising and falling with each breath he took. "I-I just couldn't help myself. That was real hard, y'know… havin' to pretend I don't like you that way." He shook his head. "I didn't like it, not one bit."

"Me neither," Kenny agreed honestly. "Did I do okay, though?"

Butters smiled, his eyes rising to meet Kenny's. "Well, I thought you did just swell. _I _was the one that kept messin' up."

"If you're referring to the part where you groped me under the table," Kenny said, "Don't worry about it. I think we're the only ones who know what happened there."

Butters' face flooded with color. "Ah, yeah, I'm sorry about doin' that, too. I swear I didn't mean it! I was just tryin' to-"

Kenny pressed a finger to Butters' lips, making him momentarily go cross-eyed. "I know. Like I said, don't worry about it." He let his hand fall back to his side. "But for future reference, Christmas dinner is probably _not _the best place for surprise handjobs. Just saying."

Butters cocked his head to the side. "Handjobs?" he echoed. "I dunno what those are."

Kenny laughed, but it trailed away once he realized that Butters was being completely serious. Sometimes he forgot that, even though he'd 'educated' Butters quite a bit over years, he still remained largely innocent and ignorant of most things sexual. Kenny rolled his eyes and leaned down to whisper in Butters' ear.

Butters gasped. "O-Oh, Lordy! Heck no, I wasn't tryin' to do _that_!" he exclaimed, then looked down and wrung his hands nervously. "I-I mean, unless you _want _me to… gosh, I've never even thought of doin' nothin' like that before, but if you'd like it, Kenny…" He swallowed audibly and shifted from foot to foot. "I could do it."

Kenny groaned. Hearing that Butters was willing to push aside his own doubts and fears and give him a handjob was somehow both the sweetest and sexiest thing he'd ever heard, and Butters was still so close to him and _God_, now he was _picturing _it… Unresolved sexual tension was a real bitch, Kenny decided, and he and Butters had a shit-ton of it. Great. "Uh, I'll take you up on that offer someday," Kenny assured him, then pointed at the house across the street with an elaborate nativity scene in the front yard, "But not right now. Baby Jesus is watching."

Butters looked over his shoulder and giggled. "Golly, that _is _kinda creepy, huh?" he asked, looking back up at Kenny. "So… what d'ya wanna do now?"

_Handjobs, please, _Kenny thought, but wisely decided to answer with his upstairs brain. "I have your gift in the car. We could open our presents, if that sounds good to you."

Butters grinned. "Boy, does it! I left your gift in my house, though." He kissed Kenny chastely. "Wait here, 'kay? I'll be right back."

"'Kay." Kenny watched Butters run back inside and smiled to himself. While he waited, he thought more about their previous conversation and came to the conclusion that Butters was probably really good at handjobs. He remembered one particular day in their middle school art class when he watched Butters deftly working a pottery wheel, his hands running up and down the clay, twisting it, molding it. Kenny recalled excusing himself to jack off in the bathroom after that experience. Art class used to always make him horny, for some reason. It probably had something to do with all the naked chicks they were supposed to draw.

Butters reappeared moments later, a colorfully-wrapped box tucked under one arm. "Got it!" he announced breathlessly, smiling as their fingers intertwined and they walked to the car together. Kenny liked holding hands with Butters, even if it was still a little gay for his tastes, and he missed the feeling of Butters' palm against his when they had to separate to get into opposite sides of the car. He brushed some miscellaneous pieces of paper and fast food items off the dashboard and then rubbed his hands together to get some heat into them. "Who's going first?" Kenny asked Butters, who was currently buckling himself into the passenger's seat for no apparent reason. It wasn't like they were going anywhere.

Butters drummed his fingers against the box in his lap. "Could you open yours first, please?" he proposed hesitantly, biting his lower lip. "If you don't wanna, that's okay, too. I wouldn't mind openin' mine first, 'cause I'd really like ta know what it is."

"Sure, I'll open mine first," Kenny replied. Butters beamed as he handed him the gift, watching while Kenny tore apart the wrapping paper and pried open the box. Inside was a brand new orange winter coat - the expensive kind he'd seen while peering enviously through store windows at the mall - and a scarf and new pair of gloves on top of it. Kenny slipped on the gloves and zipped up the coat, feeling like he could practically orgasm from the soft, warm material inside it. He didn't think he'd ever owned anything even _close _to being this nice. "Jesus, Butters, this is _awesome_. Now I won't have to look like a hobo," he said wryly. "This must've cost a fortune. How much was it?"

Butters' brow furrowed with thought. "All in all? 'Bout $50, I think."

"$50?" Kenny repeated, his jaw slackening slightly. "Holy shit, dude. Where did you get all that money?"

"Paris Hilton," Butters replied gravely.

Kenny decided he _really_ didn't want to know the details of anything that involved getting money from Paris Hilton. He wrapped the scarf around his neck and tightened the coat's cinch until his mouth was obscured by the hood. "How do I sound?" he asked, delighting in the familiar chorus of muffled words. After so many years, he _still _felt weird hearing his voice come out clearly.

Butters blinked. "I can't hear a darn thing you're sayin'."

Kenny grinned. "Good. That means it works." He pulled down the hood and wiggled his fingers inside the gloves. "Thanks, Butters. I really like it."

"Aw, shucks. I'm glad you do," Butters said, perking up from the praise. "C'n I open mine now?"

Kenny nodded in the direction of the glove compartment. "Yeah. It's in there. Sorry, I didn't have any boxes or wrapping paper lying around."

Butters popped open the glove compartment and rifled through it, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. A moment later, he retracted his hand, a tube of KY jelly clutched firmly therein. "Is this it?" he wondered aloud, attempting to read the label in the dim light of the car.

Kenny plucked the tube from Butters' grasp and tossed it haphazardly into the back seat before he could figure out what it was. "No, it's not," he asserted, his heart rate returning to its normal pace. Kenny wasn't necessarily ashamed of it; some people always kept spare tires in the car, and he always kept lube in his glove compartment. Whatever. They were both for emergencies, right? He just didn't want to have to explain its presence to Butters, who would probably say something unintentionally sexy again and chip away at Kenny's rapidly diminishing resolve. "It's big and square and kind of hard to miss."

Butters, looking more puzzled than usual, shrugged and plunged his hand back into the glove compartment. He found the music box quickly and pulled it out after a few seconds, holding it in his hands with veneration. After a nod of encouragement from Kenny, he slowly turned the crank on the side, his mouth forming a small 'o' as music began to pour out and fill the car. "Well, ain't that the darnedest thing," he whispered, his face glowing with a contented smile.

Kenny just watched him, a contented smile on his own face, and when the song came to an end and Butters opened his mouth to speak, Kenny gently interrupted him to say, "Open it up."

Butters did, and he chuckled quietly as he pulled out the three Butterfingers. "Kenny," he murmured, swiveling toward him, "It's perfect."

Kenny felt the grip of The Feelings again, making his stomach roil with euphoria. "Really? I wasn't sure if you'd like it or not. I mean, I got it for kind of cheap, but… it reminded me of you." He rubbed the back of his neck through the hood. "It's okay if you think it's stupid."

"Kenny," Butters repeated seriously, taking Kenny's hand in his own, "You coulda given me a piece of trash off the street an' I'd prob'ly still love it 'cause it came from you."

"I'll remember that, next time I think about spending money on you," Kenny drawled, though he was smiling. Butters' words had a tendency to make him feel inexplicably, stupidly happy.

Butters laughed. "Well, it's the truth. But this one is especially perfect. I love it." He glanced down at the music box and then threw his arms around Kenny, hugging him fiercely. "I love _you_," he confessed softly, his lips skimming Kenny's earlobe.

Kenny stiffened. Did Butters just…? No, he didn't. He couldn't. Kenny tried to convince himself that he hadn't just heard those three words from Butters, that they were any other combination of syllables, that he'd misheard him or imagined it, but it was futile. Butters had said them right in his ear, after all. He knew damn well what he'd heard. Butters had just told Kenny that he loved him, and this time they were both awake to hear it. He remained frozen, not daring to breathe or speak, hoping and praying that this was a bad dream that he'd wake up from soon.

Gradually, he felt Butters tensing in his arms. The shorter blond reared back, but his face still hovered inches away from Kenny's, bearing a woebegone expression. "You're not sayin' it back," he stated flatly, like he'd been half-expecting this reaction.

Kenny tried to speak past the sudden dryness in his mouth. "Butters, I… I…" He cast around in his mind, searching desperately for something, _anything _to say that wouldn't hurt Butters in the process. Was that even possible? Every response he came up with somehow involved him rejecting Butters. No matter what, Butters was going to end up being hurt because Kenny didn't feel the same way. This realization made him feel like the world's biggest asshole.

The longer he went without speaking, the more utterly miserable Butters looked. Kenny wasn't even able to stammer out one word of protest before Butters was unbuckling the seat belt with trembling hands and hopping out of the car.

Once he was gone, Kenny rested his forehead against the steering wheel. "Fuck," he hissed through gritted teeth. He had the distinct notion that he'd just seriously fucked up, but what else could he have done? Lie to Butters and say that he was in love with him so they could both skip off into the sunset and live happily ever after? No; he wanted to make Butters happy, and he wanted to save Butters, but lying about something as big and important about love was not going to do either of them any favors. If he told Butters he was in love with him, then Butters _would _certainly be happy - but it would be a false happiness. And was a brief period of false happiness really worth the heartbreak that would ensue if, God forbid, Butters realized that Kenny had been lying all along? So maybe this whole relationship had started out as a falsification on Kenny's part, but Kenny knew how he felt about Butters now and he wanted to be as honest with him as possible. Butters deserved love, and although Kenny couldn't give that to him at the moment, he _could_ give Butters the next best thing: honesty. And Butters also didn't deserve his boyfriend hiding in the car like a pussy after he'd just made an epic love confession.

Kenny took a few drags on a cigarette to calm his nerves and then got out of the car, throwing the butt onto the icy road and crushing it with his shoe. He was going after Butters.

It wasn't hard. All he had to do was follow the tracks in the snow to the Stotches' backyard, where he found Butters standing with his back to Kenny, slightly stooped, like he was too emotionally exhausted to hold himself upright any longer. Not wanting to startle him, Kenny made sure his footfalls were loud as he approached. _Crunch, crunch, crunch_. But Butters didn't turn to face him, didn't even move or show the smallest acknowledgment of Kenny's presence. He halted 5 feet behind Butters and was trying to work out an explanation in his head when Butters started to speak. "I knew I shouldn'ta said it," Butters began, so quietly that Kenny had to strain to hear him. "I was bein' stupid, an' don't you try tellin' me I wasn't just to make me feel better, 'cause we both know it's true. If I was smarter, I woulda known that you wouldn't be able to say it back. It only makes sense that you wouldn't; we've only been datin' for a month. But sometimes I forget about that, on account of I've liked you for so long. Heck, I've had a crush on you for… for 5 years." He laughed, almost bitterly, and shot Kenny a brief glance over his shoulder. "Didja know that?" Kenny shook his head. Butters nodded and looked away again. "Well, I've known how I feel about you for an awful long time, an' my brain said, 'No, Butters, don't say it, it's too soon, don't be a dummy', but I guess my heart just got tired of keepin' it in for so long. I shoulda listened to my brain. My heart's an idiot." Kenny walked forward again, slowly, cautiously, like he was approaching a wounded animal, until he was standing in front of Butters. Butters averted his gaze, but not before Kenny saw the moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes. "But my heart ain't a _total_ dummy 'cause at least it was smart enough to fall in love with you, Kenny McCormick, an' I regret tellin' you that so soon but I _don't _regret feelin' it."

Shit. Kenny didn't know what to say to that. How could you possibly say _anything_ when someone just poured out their whole heart to you? When they put all their emotions and affections and insecurities on display, even with the knowledge that the person they were displaying it to couldn't return their feelings? Kenny had no fucking clue, and he'd always been better at expressing himself through actions anyway, so he just stepped forward and enveloped Butters in his arms and tried to convey as much acceptance as possible in that gesture. He was both anticipant and unprepared for the way Butters completely fell apart at his touch, the way his whole body shook with every sob that coursed through him. "I messed up, Kenny," Butters choked out against his shoulder, the words garbled from tears. "I'm always messin' up. I messed up when I said - when I-I said I loved you, an' I'm gonna mess up a whole lot more in my life, I just know it, 'cause I always mess up even when I'm tryin' my hardest not to. I-I'm goin' ta therapy an' I wanna fix myself, I wanna stop messin' up so much, but heck if I know if it's workin', my parents don't think so, they say, 'Butters, you never learn your lesson, you need to behave yourself', but I never do, so I guess I'll just always be a-a little fuck-up…" Butters sniffled and bit back another sob, though his shoulders still bobbed from the restraint. "I'm scared, Kenny. Jesus. I'm scared of messin' up an' makin' you hate me like everyone else does an' then you won't wanna be with me no more. I'm scared an' I'm happy an' I'm so many things all at once, I just don't know what to do…"

Kenny rubbed Butters' back. "Hey, hey," he soothed. "Calm down. It's alright. It's okay. I'm not going anywhere. You didn't mess up, Butters. You don't mess up any more than anyone else - shit, I mess up _way _more than you do. If there's a fuck-up in this relationship, it's not you, it's me."

Butters looked up at him with stricken, watery eyes. "Don't say that, Kenny, it ain't true, I-"

Kenny brought his lips crashing down onto Butters' salty and tearstained ones, effectively shutting him up. "Yes, it is," Kenny asserted when he pulled away. "Now listen to me: you're not a fuck-up; you don't always mess up; there's pretty much nothing you could ever do that would make me hate you; and it's okay that you're scared, you know? I am, too. Whatever. It's natural."

"Y-You are?" Butters asked disbelievingly. "B-But you ain't scared of nothin', Kenny. You fight crime an' die an' come back ta life an' you just _know _about things like handjobs an' I can't do none of that stuff. I'm not good at nothin'."

Kenny snorted. "Oh, BS. You're good at tons of stuff."

"Like what?" Butters inquired dully, like he wasn't expecting much of an answer.

Kenny rubbed circles into the plane between Butters' shoulder blades as he thought. "Well, for starters, you have great taste in coats."

Butters laughed in spite of himself. "That ain't a talent."

Kenny smiled. Good. He much preferred a laughing Butters to a crying one. "Sure it is. Ever seen me try to buy a coat? It'd make you lose all faith in the human race. I look like a dumbass, dude." Butters chuckled again. "But in all seriousness… God, you really need to have more confidence in yourself. Like I said, you're good at tons of stuff. And trust me on this: _no one _hates you. Not even Cartman. And I _definitely _don't. I like you a lot, Butters - a _lot_, I really do - even if I don't… um…"

"Even if you don't love me," Butters finished for him. Kenny opened his mouth to elaborate, because _God_, every time Butters said that it made him feel like such a _dick_, but Butters continued, "An' that's just hunky-dory with me, Kenny. I don't wanna pressure you into sayin' it if you don't mean it. You take your time, alright? I'll wait as long as it takes."

Kenny used the back of his sleeve to wipe away a few tears that had beaded on Butters' face. "You're an awesome boyfriend," he said, grinning. "Did I ever tell you that? I don't think I did."

For the first time in what felt like ages, but had really only been 10 minutes, Butters looked genuinely happy. "Y-You could stand ta mention it more often." He wrapped his arms around Kenny and rested against his shoulder, sniffling a bit. They stayed like that for awhile; Kenny just holding Butters as Butters hummed 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star', vagrant tears occasionally falling from his eyes to be absorbed by the coat or pool on Kenny's collarbone. He didn't mind. Butters had evidently been holding all that in for a long time, so it was probably healthy for him to let it out now. The least Kenny could do was just be there for him.

Butters lifted his head off Kenny's shoulder and surveyed the tear-darkened spots. "Aw, hamburgers. I'm ruinin' your new f-fifty dollar coat," he observed, and he sounded so damn sad and needlessly apologetic about it that Kenny had to laugh.

"Butters. Tears don't leave a permanent stain," Kenny felt the need to inform him, his chest practically convulsing from laughter. He wasn't sure _why_; there was nothing even remotely funny about this situation, but for some reason, he couldn't stop laughing. Maybe it was so unfunny that it was funny. Kenny wasn't sure.

He realized that he probably looked like a jackass to Butters right now, but moments later, Butters started laughing too. "Oh. Right. I don't even know what I'm talkin' about anymore," Butters admitted, wiping away another tear that could be from mirth or sadness or maybe even both. "Why are we laughin'?"

Kenny had to think about that. "I have no fucking idea. I think we're both hysterical."

Butters nodded. "Makes sense." He sniffled and looked past Kenny. "Um, maybe we should go back inside now? My folks are gonna start wonderin'…"

Kenny also nodded as he extricated himself from Butters' hug. He didn't think he'd given Butters' parents any reason to suspect him of being romantically involved with their son yet, but the longer they stayed outside, the more likely it became that they _would _grow suspicious.

Butters rubbed his eyes. "Do I look like I've just been cryin'?" he asked, dropping his fists.

Kenny inwardly winced. Butters' eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, his nose pinkish, and Kenny could clearly see the not-quite-yet dry tracks of tears that had formed rivulets down his cheeks. It couldn't be more obvious that Butters had just been bawling if he walked around with a huge flashing neon sign that read 'RECENTLY HEARTBROKEN' above his head. "Kind of, yeah," he answered.

Butters frowned. "Oh, son of a biscuit. Wuh-what do I tell 'em?"

Kenny chewed on the inside of his cheek and glanced around the yard, looking for a possible explanation. He found it on the ground. Valiantly hiding a smile, Kenny scooped up a handful of snow and dumped it right on Butters' head.

Butters predictably let out a squeak of surprise and stumbled backwards, attempting to shake off the snow that was now covering his spiky blond hair. "Wha' - I - _huh_?" he burst out.

"You told your parents we were going to be 'fooling around in the snow', right?" Kenny asked, using air quotes. "Well, we better damn well make it look like that's what we were doing. As for the crying… I'll just tell your parents you slipped on a patch of black ice and twisted your ankle or something." He beckoned to Butters and turned on his heel, heading toward the house. He stopped in his tracks, however, when he felt something cold and soft hitting him square in the back. Kenny whirled around to see Butters standing in the same place he'd left him, whistling innocently, his eyes averted and his hands clasped behind his back. He grinned and slowly shook his head in admiration. "You little shit!"

Butters pointed to himself. "Who, me?" he asked sweetly.

Kenny rolled his eyes, though he was still grinning. "No, the guy standing next to you. Does it _look _like I'm talking to anyone else?"

Butters paced back and forth, hands still behind his back, flashing Kenny a coy smile that made his insides turn to mush. "I dunno what you're implyin', but _I _wasn't the one that hit ya. I think whoever _did_, though, just thought that it's only fair if you look like you've been playin' in the snow, too."

"Okay. I get what you're saying." Kenny stooped down to pick up another handful of snow, then flung it straight at Butters' chest. "So, what about that? Was _that _fair?"

Butters had already packed a snowball and hurled it at Kenny's arm by the time he was done speaking. "No, it wasn't. _Now _it's fair!"

The exchange quickly evolved into an all-out snowball war, the two of them laughing and ducking and throwing and getting hit, and Kenny didn't even care that they were 16 year old guys doing something childish because this was the most fun he'd had in recent memory. By the time they finished, they were both covered from head to toe in snow except for their beaming faces.

"Alright," Kenny said, pulling some clumps of ice out of his hair with one hand and looping the other arm around Butters' shoulders. "Ready to limp?"

Butters rubbed his knuckles together. "Well, ah, wouldn't it make more sense for you ta carry me? I don't do limpin' so well…"

Kenny sighed. "You're really milking this, aren't you?" he asked dryly, but shrugged and went along with it anyway because he was pretty much pussy-whipped for Butters at this point. Or ass-whipped, considering Butters didn't have a pussy. He kneeled down slightly and scooped Butters up, stumbling a bit in the process because Kenny wasscrawny and poor and underfed, but he regained his balance quickly.

Butters frowned at him. "You don't hafta do it if I'm too heavy, Ken," he said with evident concern.

"Nah," Kenny grunted. "I'm good."

That must've been good enough for Butters. "My hero," he praised in a sing-song voice, leaning up to give Kenny a swift kiss on the cheek, and that one little gesture made it worth the aching pain in his arms.

Butters' parents bought the twisted ankle excuse so Kenny was allowed to carry Butters bridal style into his bedroom, which sounded a lot more sexy and promising than it actually was. Even before Kenny nudged open the door and set Butters down on the bed, the younger blond was fast asleep, snoring faintly. Kenny didn't mind; he thought it was funny, actually, and he couldn't blame Butters. The poor boy had had a tiring day, both physically and emotionally. Kenny felt like he was about to pass out, himself.

He then stumbled upon the predicament that Butters was coated in rapidly-melting snow, and his bed was starting to get wet and that couldn't be very comfortable, could it? After much careful thought and grappling with his inner pervert, Kenny took off Butters' clothes, which, once again, was a process that sounded a lot sexier than it actually was. He stripped Butters of his coat and shirt but mercifully left his pants on because Kenny didn't have _that _much self-restraint, dammit. Once he finished, he pulled the blankets up to Butters' chin and just watched him for a minute or two. Was that creepy? Kenny wasn't sure, and he didn't really care. He was watching Butters sleep, occasionally tossing and turning or muttering some incoherent string of words, when the full magnitude of their situation hit him: this boy _loved _him. This boy had looked past Kenny's depravity, poverty, and overall flaws and was able to find something worth loving among all that crap. How great was _that_? Pretty fucking great, in Kenny's opinion. Kenny was used to giving and giving and getting nothing in return. It was all part of a routine for him. But here was someone who had broken the mold, who had not only given Kenny his heart but had trusted him not to break it, too. He remembered what Butters had said to him earlier, about being scared and happy and so many things all at once, and although Kenny hadn't known what that meant at the time, he thought he understood it now. He was happy that Butters loved him - how could you not be happy when someone cared for you that much? - but it also scared him out of his mind. He felt like he was flying and falling at the same time. Was that what love was like? Amazing and beautiful and happy and terrifying all put together?

Kenny realized it was getting pretty late and his family was either passed out, drunk, or waiting for him. He should leave. Butters' window was nailed shut, so Kenny had to ditch the preferred theatric escape and use the front door. He walked out of Butters' bedroom and down the stairs like a condemned man approaching the gallows. Maybe, just _maybe _luck was on his side, and he wouldn't have to face Butters' parents. But as luck would have it, Stephen was sitting in the living room, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper. He looked like one of those Dads who tried way too hard. Kenny would've laughed, but he was attempting to make as discreet of an exit as possible. He was in front of the door, his hand was on the doorknob, he was turning it…

"How is Butters doing?"

Kenny reluctantly turned to face the man, who was watching him over the top of the paper through eyes narrowed with suspicion. He schooled his expression into one of hardened indifference. "He's fine. Sleeping like a baby, actually," Kenny said, his voice betraying nothing. "His foot should be better by tomorrow."

Mr. Stotch continued to scrutinize him, searching for any signs that Kenny was lying, to no avail. Kenny was good at hiding behind a mask. "Well," he said evenly, "Thank you for taking care of him."

"You're welcome."

"You and Butters are good friends." It was a statement, not a question. A challenge.

Kenny nodded. "Yes, we are."

"Just good friends. That's all it is."

Kenny felt his jaw clench and his hands tighten into fists at his sides, but he forced them to relax. "Yes," he lied, his voice coming out harsher and lower than he'd expected. _No. What's it to you? Why do you even care?_ "That's all it is." He enunciated each syllable like it was a swear word.

A satisfied smile flickered across Mr. Stotch's face. "Good."

Kenny wanted nothing more than to wipe that disgusting smirk off his face, but he knew it wouldn't get him anywhere. Butters wouldn't want it. Butters. The thought of Butters was enough to make Kenny keep his cool. "If you'll excuse me, I have to go home, now. My family's waiting for me." He opened the door. "Merry Christmas." Before he could get a reply, Kenny walked out and closed the door behind him.

For the second time that night, Kenny had the distinct notion that he'd just seriously fucked up.


	13. Retarded in Love

**A/N: **Here, have a fluffy chapter before everything goes to hell.

No Cartman in this one. I missed writing him. He'll feature prominently in the next chapter, though.

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed last chapter!

**Disclaimer: **Don't own South Park. The title of this chapter is taken from the song "Retarded in Love" by Say Anything.

**Chapter 12**

Kenny had never envisioned he and Butters as the type of couple to sneak around at night.

Not that he was complaining. There was something really cool and kind of sexy about the fact that Butters, who used to practically have a conniption fit at the thought of rule-breaking, was willing to risk certain grounding just to see him for a few hours. What _wasn't _cool or sexy was how the only reason they were even doing this was because Kenny had blown their cover.

Apparently, the Stotches were now convinced that Kenny was an evil sodomite hellbent on ravaging every last shred of their son's innocence, despite the two boys' best efforts to prove the contrary. They hadn't explicitly come out and accused them of 'doin' the what-what in the butt' - as Butters so eloquently and hilariously put it - but they had been clear enough about their suspicions when they told Kenny he was barred from any and all interactions with their son right before they slammed the door in his face. Butters was shocked and dismayed at this turn of events; Kenny was just dismayed. There was a part of him that had known this was a possibility from the moment he strolled in the door on Christmas Eve and felt Stephen and Linda's scrutinizing gazes fall upon him, so he wasn't very surprised. That didn't make it suck any less, though.

_Well, this is it, I guess_, Kenny had told himself. If Butters' parents were on an anti-Kenny crusade, then Butters would most likely fall in line and cut him off, because Butters would always listen to his parents in the end. He thought he would be able to handle that. After all, he'd agreed to enter the relationship with the knowledge that it would inevitably end with him and Butters breaking up. It was supposed to be a given. But then Kenny realized something that _did _take him by surprise: he didn't want it to be a given. He didn't want to stop dating Butters. He didn't want to stop kissing him, touching him, and doing everything else that they'd grown comfortable doing around each other in the past month. He didn't want to go back to being 'just friends', and he _really _didn't want to stop seeing Butters altogether. Everything else he could learn to grudgingly accept, but there was no way in Hell he was going to completely stay away from Butters.

Luckily for him, Butters wasn't going to just lie down and accept his parents' wishes, either. "I don't even care what they say or do ta me no more," Butters had told him over the phone, his voice adorably determined, "I'm not gonna stop bein' with you! They can't make me!" Kenny remembered the overwhelming relief that washed over him at those words, as well as the strange thrills that racked his body. They weren't breaking up. Everything was going to be okay.

Once the initial thrills and relief subsided, they were presented with a simple but imposing question: now what? They could talk all they wanted about how they weren't going to let anything tear them apart, but they were just empty threats if they never acted on it. Butters eventually came up with the idea that they meet every night at Stark's Pond until school started again and they could see each other during the day. Kenny was fine with that plan - he got such little sleep he might as well be an insomniac, and he had plenty of practice with sneaking out - but he was worried that the transition wouldn't be as easy on Butters. If Kenny got caught, there were no consequences. His parents wouldn't give a shit. For Butters, however, there _were _consequences. His parents would definitely give a shit. When Kenny warned Butters of this, he replied evenly, "I know what could happen. An' I just don't care." Kenny still had his misgivings, but he was more than happy to accept Butters' answer. He wanted this to work.

Kenny rolled his shoulders and winced as he walked down the empty road leading to Stark's Pond. The shitty Colorado weather system had dumped 3 feet of snow the previous night, and Kenny had spent all morning shoveling it outside of Jim's Drugs. His upper arms and lower back were screaming at him to go home and get some sleep, and Kenny was close to giving in, but the thought of seeing Butters again kept him awake and on his feet. He ignored the ache and continued walking until the entirety of Stark's Pond came into view.

The pond was almost eerily quiet in the absence of the children and adults that occupied it during the day. It had a particular mysteriousness about it under the cover of darkness, broken only by the light of the full moon, giving everything a soft glow. Kenny had to hand it to Butters: he could pick a pretty awesome rendezvous spot.

…Butters, who was currently nowhere to be seen. He let his gaze sweep across the wide expanse of snow and trees, searching for any sign of the other blond and attempting to stymie the panic that was building in his chest. Had something happened? Or maybe Butters just forgot that they were meeting tonight? Kenny doubted it. Butters wasn't the type of person to make plans and then forget about them.

He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he didn't even notice the slender arms wrapping around his neck from behind until he heard a familiar voice whisper one word in his ear: "Boo." Kenny practically jumped right out of his skin, feeling the instinctual urge to punch whoever was behind him but thankfully suppressing it when he realized who it was. "Jesus, Butters," he laughed, lowering his hood and twisting around until they were facing each other. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry," Butters mumbled, reinforcing the apology with a kiss that sucked all the tension out of his muscles. "I gotta say: I missed you somethin' fierce, Kenny."

"I missed you, too," Kenny admitted, hugging Butters close. It was hard to believe that they'd only spent three days without seeing each other face to face. He could have sworn it was longer than that… "Hey, what's that?"

Butters looked up at him. "What's what?"

Kenny put his hand under Butters' chin and tilted it until the moonlight was hitting the left side of his face. So he hadn't just been imagining it. "You have a cut on your forehead," he noticed, frowning.

"O-Oh." Butters lifted a finger to the thin gash just above his left eye. "That's nothin'. I kinda, um… jumped outta a window, an' I forgot 'bout the bushes." He gave a small self-conscious laugh. "Whoops."

"You jumped out a window?" Kenny repeated. "That's pretty cool. But you didn't hurt yourself, did you?" He took Butters' soft hands in his own, flipping them over one way and then the other to make sure there were no huge, gaping flesh wounds or anything.

"Naw. I'm not hurt."

"Are you sure?" Kenny pressed. That was one thing that he and Butters shared in common: unselfishness, almost to a fault. They were both always putting the needs of others above their own, so much so that they sometimes completely forget about themselves in the process. Butters, like Kenny, was the type of person who would rather endure their pain in silence than put stress on anyone else.

Butters smiled, like he knew exactly what Kenny was thinking. "Don't worry. I'm sure."

"Okay. I believe you," Kenny said, leaning down to smooth over the slightly marred skin with his lips. "There. Feel better?"

Butters beamed. "Much better, Dr. Kenny," he chirped, intertwining their fingers and gently tugging Kenny in the direction of a bench near the water. As Kenny slid into the space next to Butters, he felt a muscle at the base of his neck twinge in protest and turned away, hoping that the other boy didn't notice him grimacing. "Aw, geez. _You_ didn't hurt yourself, didja, Ken?"

Kenny shook his head. "No, I'm okay."

"Are you sure?" Butters quoted him, grinning briefly before adopting a more concerned expression.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Kenny rubbed at the hurting part in question before letting his hand drop back onto the icy bench. He stared at the smooth, frozen surface of the pond and felt Butters' studious gaze on him, but didn't think much of it until Butters dragged one hand up his back to rest at the base of his neck.

"Is this where it's hurtin'?" Butters asked, moving his fingers in slow circles. An involuntary moan was all the answer he needed. Kenny's eyes fluttered shut as Butters' fingertips moved up and down the nape of his neck, gliding elegantly across his skin, and then applied more pressure back in the strained muscle. He kind of wanted to marry Butters right now.

"Fuck," Kenny rasped. "Just… fuck. How did you get so good at this?"

Butters rubbed his thumb against the knobby bone at the top of Kenny's spinal column, making him shudder pleasantly. "Oh, my Mom makes me give her a massage sometimes," he replied, like that was a perfectly normal occurrence. "I like doin' it, but I dunno if I'm any good at it."

Kenny's eyes dropped to half mast. "Trust me: you're good at it." He gave Butters an encouraging nudge when the other boy averted his gaze modestly, and was rewarded with not one, but _two _hands massaging his neck. _This is better than sex, _Kenny thought, instinctively moving closer to Butters, who seemed more than content to continue in silence. Kenny liked that about Butters; he didn't feel the need to always make small talk. He appreciated silence.

And Kenny appreciated Butters - especially at the moment, because there was no way you _couldn't _appreciate someone when they were giving you a free massage - more than he could really put into words. He'd known Butters for most of his life, yet for some reason, it took him 16 years to realize just how great he was. There were so many great things about Butters, and they were all relatively simple things, like his subtle but unique sense of humor, his willingness to listen to your problems no matter how big or small they may be, and his kind personality in general. Kenny wasn't the most social person by nature, but when he was around Butters, he felt completely and totally at home. Butters wasn't just his boyfriend; he was basically his _best _friend. And now his boyfriend and best friend was giving him a massage. Sweet Jesus, he was so lucky.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Butters began, a hint of amusement in his voice. "But don't it kinda defeat the purpose of sneakin' out to be together if one or both of us falls asleep?"

Kenny rubbed the grogginess out of his now-open eyes. "Hey, _you're _the one putting me to sleep with your goddamn magic fingers," he retorted, straightening his back until it made a satisfying _pop _sound.

Butters' hands stilled. "I can stop now, if you'd like."

Kenny reluctantly nodded. "Yeah, that's probably for the best," he muttered, frowning to himself when the light pressure disappeared from his neck. The sudden absence of Butters' touch was hitting him hard, so he wrapped an arm around Butters' waist and pulled him closer for a 'thank you' kiss. He had always been the type of person who felt the need to return the favor, whether in a sexual way or not, and since Butters had made _him _feel better, it would only be fair to make Butters feel as good as possible, too. He swiped his tongue along the roof of Butters' mouth, reveling in the little sound of delight that Butters made in response. Butters made the best noises that Kenny had ever heard. He wanted to hear more of them.

Butters smiled at him dreamily when he pulled away, their faces still mere inches from each other. "Well, I dunno about you, but _I'm _awake now."

Kenny laughed. "Good. It's almost midnight, you know. I'm surprised you haven't passed out yet."

"Why would I be passin' out?"

Kenny arched an eyebrow. "Because whenever I'm with you, you're always asleep by 10, babe," he reminded him gently.

Butters pouted. "That ain't true. I can stay up late if I try real hard!" He crossed his arms and stared at Kenny with wide eyes, in what seemed to be an attempt to prove his ability to stay awake.

Kenny was trying his damnedest not to laugh, but it was basically impossible to keep a straight face with the way Butters looked like his eyeballs were about to fall out of their sockets. "Uh huh," he said, chuckling.

"You don't believe me," Butters guessed, sticking his lower lip out even farther. He really needed to stop doing that. He looked too kissable when he acted sullen, and it was becoming incredibly distracting.

"Not really," he admitted. "I'd like to see you prove me wrong, though." Butters still looked unsatisfied, so Kenny draped an arm around him and gave him an affectionate shake. "If you _do _get tired though, seriously, I won't make fun of you. We can call this off whenever you want."

Butters sighed and leaned into Kenny. "I know you wouldn't make fun of me, Kenny. You're good. _Too _good. I don't wanna go home." He found Kenny's stationery hand on the bench and meshed their fingers together, squeezing him. "I had a pretty awful day. Since I couldn't see you, I was gonna hang out with Eric, but he was too busy comin' up with some scheme ta break up Wendy 'n Token, so that didn't work out." He paused, biting his lower lip hesitantly, like he wasn't quite sure whether to continue or not. "So I ended up talkin' to some senior fellas in my neighborhood."

"Senior guys?" Kenny echoed, his eyebrows pleating in confusion.

Butters nodded, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "Yep. They were, ah, helpin' me with… some homework." For reasons unbeknownst to Kenny, Butters' face suddenly flooded with color. "A surprise. For you."

"A homework surprise," Kenny repeated, deadpan. "For me. You know, I think that would be more fitting for someone like Kyle, who gets massive boners for books. I hardly ever do my homework."

Butters appeared mildly exasperated, and yeah, there was _definitely _a reddish tint to his cheeks. Why? Kenny had no clue. "No, i-it's just a surprise. I'd tell you more 'bout it, but that would ruin the surprise, so you'll just hafta wait."

Kenny scrutinized Butters for a moment, wondering why he suddenly looked so agitated and flustered, but soon gave up. If Butters didn't want to talk about it, then Kenny wouldn't press the issue. "So… you hang out with senior guys when I'm not around, huh?" Kenny wondered. "Should I be jealous?"

Butters shook his head vigorously, sticking out his tongue in disgust. "Gosh, no. They weren't very good-lookin' at all." He gave Kenny a sidelong grin. "An' besides, they weren't really my type, anyway."

"Oh?" Kenny said, curious. "What _is _your type?"

"You," Butters replied swiftly. Kenny felt his heart do a little backflip inside his chest. "What about you, Ken? D'you got a type?"

Kenny had actually never given much thought to whether or not he had a 'type'. He thought back to his previous boyfriends, girlfriends, and crushes, and didn't find enough in common between them to constitute a pattern. Brunettes, blonds, redheads, skinny people, heavy people, normal people, weird people… he could find something attractive in basically everyone. A good personality was important, and he'd be lying if he said looks weren't a factor, but there weren't many traits he considered a deal breaker. He wasn't very picky. _Any living thing with a hole, _Kenny thought wryly. "I don't think I have a type, honestly," he confessed. "But I _do _like short, blue-eyed blonds with sexy hick accents."

Butters frowned thoughtfully. "Hm… I don't think I know anyone like that."

Kenny rolled his eyes. "I was talking about _you_, Butters."

"Ohhhhh," Butters laughed in embarrassment. He did a double take. "W-Wait, you think the way I talk is… sexy?"

"Oh yeah," Kenny purred, jouncing his eyebrows. He didn't know if he'd really consider Butters' pseudo-redneck accent 'sexy' - he'd been mostly joking when he referred to it as such - but he _did _think it was ridiculously charming. He wondered if Butters used Southern expressions during sex. _That _would be pretty hot.

The corners of Butters' eyes were crinkled with laugh lines, but they were also half-lidded with desire, and this wasn't a very good combination when Kenny had just been daydreaming about having sex with him. It still sometimes came as a shock to him, seeing someone as sweet as Butters look so unabashedly lustful. But he guessed he shouldn't be surprised; Butters was a teenage boy, just like him, but with the extra weight of being a teenage boy around someone who he'd been pining after for _5 years _(Kenny still didn't know how he'd never noticed) and had been in love with for a similarly long time. He wouldn't be surprised if Butters was even more sexually frustrated than he was, and that was saying something since Kenny had jacked off four times that day and _still _felt horny.

_Oh, fuck it, _Kenny thought. If Butters wanted him, and he wanted Butters, why was he wasting time thinking when they could be kissing? He turned on the bench so that they were fully facing each other and grabbed Butters' face in his hands, tugging him forward halfway and bridging the rest of the gap by himself. His suspicions turned out to be correct as he hungrily mashed his lips against Butters' mouth and the other blond pressed back with equal fervor, if not more, his mouth falling open compliantly with a soft moan and his hands fisting in the front of Kenny's coat, pulling him even closer. Butters had evidently missed him quite a bit, if the way he was kissing Kenny like the world was going to end was any indication. And Kenny hadn't been lying when he said he missed Butters; either; he longed for moments like this, with Butters' soft and smooth and pliable lips gliding against his own, their warm bodies pressed together, but he had just missed Butters' presence in general. When he was with Butters, he felt like everyone and everything else could melt away, leaving only them, Kenny and Butters and nothing else, and he would be okay with that. More than okay; it would be preferable. With the silent tranquility that pervaded Stark's Pond at that moment, he almost believed that he and Butters _were _the only two people left on Earth.

Kenny's brain short circuited from pleasure when Butters moved his hands, which were previously trapped between their chests, to massage the back of his neck again. "Multi-tasking?" he asked cheekily against Butters' lips. Butters replied with a breathless laugh, but halted any further conversation when he closed the one millimeter of distance between their mouths. Kenny was thankful for that. Why was he talking, anyway? He could be putting his tongue to much better use.

And so he did, allowing his tongue to explore every little nook and cranny in Butters' mouth while Butters similarly scouted his body. Butters was starting to grow more confident, more bold, Kenny realized. While one hand kneaded Kenny's neck, the other one was busy drifting down his arched back, tracing all the bumps and valleys in his spine before settling at his hip, even hesitantly slipping two fingers beneath the waistband of Kenny's jeans. Kenny shuddered at the sudden cold sensation against his hot skin as his hips twitched, seeking to create friction that wasn't there. His eyes fluttered open to see that Butters was kneeling awkwardly on the bench, his upper body pressed flush up against Kenny while the rest of him strained to get closer. Kenny hooked his hands in the backs of Butters' knees and used that grip to pull him onto his lap.

Butters readjusted himself so that they were facing each other again, his knees on either side of Kenny's hips. Straddling him, basically. Kenny heard the angels sing. "Th-Thanks," Butters gasped raggedly, his free hand moving up to brush some shaggy hair out of Kenny's eyes. "My knees were startin' to hurt, but I didn't know how ta fix it without stoppin', so…"

"Stop talking," Kenny growled, every nerve ending on fire. "Stupid sexy accent…" He grabbed the zipper of his old parka - _Butters' _parka now - and yanked down on it, but of course, the evil cockblocking thing just _had _to get caught on the parka's ratty fabric. Kenny uttered a muffled curse word against Butters' wet mouth as he fumbled with the zipper, trying to get it unstuck without diverting any attention from the beautiful boy on his lap. Eventually, the zipper popped free, and it was with great anticipation that Kenny pulled it down the rest of the way and peeled the parka off Butters' body… only to see _another coat _and the collars of at least 4 different shirts underneath it. Kenny broke off the kiss long enough to stare dumbly at the turquoise coat, then up to Butters' face, wordlessly asking him _what the fuck? _

Butters' pale blue eyes slanted away sheepishly, the light of the moon illuminating him from behind. "I didn't wanna get cold," he mumbled. "M-My parents would ground me for sure if I caught hypothermia."

Kenny continued to stare at him dumbly, until the words registered in his mind and he burst out laughing. _Of course_ Butters chose to wear 5 billion layers of clothes on the night that Kenny thought he might want to go a little farther with him than usual. But maybe it was for the best. Kenny's nerve endings still felt like they were aflame with longing, but it fizzled into a more pleasant warmth as he stared up at Butters, who looked adorably meek with a frown on his kiss-swollen lips. Affection surged in Kenny's chest as he dragged his knuckles across Butters' cheek, dipping below his jaw and resting underneath his chin, tilting it down so Kenny could kiss him. He felt Butters shiver against him as they kissed slowly, their former frenetic passion giving way to careful indulgence. Kenny could stay like that forever.

But unfortunately, they couldn't. After a couple minutes, they broke apart for oxygen, their faces still hovering close enough to breathe the same recycled air. "I love you," Butters whispered. Kenny felt his lax muscles stiffen, but there was a different sensation, too, one that he wasn't familiar with. "I know I said I'd stop sayin' it, an' I will." He gulped. "I just… wanted you to know that I… that I mean it. Lotsa kids our age say stuff like that all the time, but they don't really mean it, an' I think that's a cryin' shame. But when _I_ say it, I really mean it. I won't say it no more, though, 'cause I don't want you feelin' pressured or uncomfortable."

"No," Kenny protested, his mouth moving faster than his mind. "No, I… I like when you say it, actually."

Butters' eyebrows moved slowly up his forehead, then knitted together with confusion. "It don't make you feel weird?"

"No, it does," Kenny admitted. "It does make me feel weird, but…" He offered Butters a wobbly smile. "…In a really good way."

He saw the doubt that flickered in Butters' eyes before they were lowered. Kenny was close enough to count every long lash. "You're not gonna change your mind a-an' get mad at me if I say it again?" Butters asked, his voice trembling, still not meeting Kenny's gaze.

"I won't," Kenny said sincerely. "I promise."

Butters looked at him for a split second before glancing down at his hands, which were clanking together nervously. Kenny frowned. Maybe he was asking too much of Butters. He imagined it must be difficult, repeatedly admitting to someone that you loved them and never hearing it back. "If you don't want to say it, I'd understand," Kenny told him.

That got Butters to look at him again. "No. I like sayin' it, Kenny," Butters confessed, his face rippling into a shaky smile as he rested his palms against Kenny's cheeks. They were both so young, so raw, and, if truth be told, so inexperienced. Butters had never been in something like this before, and neither had he. Kenny wished there was an encyclopedia on how to act in a committed relationship, with a special section on couples where one person was in love and the other one would _like _to be in love but really had no idea what that felt like. He would do pretty much anything for that kind of knowledge.

The finely-carved pad of Butters' thumbs passed softly over his cheekbones as their lips pressed together. Kenny instantly melted into the kiss, tilting his head to the side to deepen it, but Butters pulled away before they could go any farther. His whimper of disappointment turned into one of pleasure as Butters' lips glided over his jaw, kissing the sensitive spot where Kenny's head met his neck. Butters had evidently memorized _all_ the spots that drove Kenny crazy, because the next thing he did was pillow his lips across the back of Kenny's ear, sending shivers of titillation up and down his spine. "I love you," Butters murmured huskily.

Kenny's eyes drifted shut and another quiet moan passed unbidden from his mouth as Butters nuzzled his neck. When he opened his eyes halfway and looked down, he realized that his hands were shaking. Not just a slight tremble, either; he was full-on _shaking _like a junkie. Part of it was Butters' actions, but Kenny had a sneaking suspicion that it was Butters' _words_ that were turning him into a human earthquake. To someone like him, who could count on one hand the number of times he'd been told 'I love you' in 16 years, those three words sounded like the most beautiful and rare thing on this Earth. They poured into him, filling every little crack and empty or missing part, making him whole. Maybe he'd always been a junkie for love; he'd just spent his whole life going through withdrawals.

"Mmm," Kenny hummed happily, running his fingers through the shorter, fuzzier hair on the sides of Butters' head. He was worried that he would float away if he didn't hold onto something, like a balloon filled with bliss instead of helium. Butters responded to his sound of content by whispering another 'I love you' against his skin. Without a doubt, this was the most intimate Kenny had ever been with another person. Sure, he'd had plenty of sex, but that was just physical gratification. This was physical gratification as well, but it was so much more than that. It was emotional. It was spiritual. It was pure. Kenny had never felt this vulnerable before, and he knew that this was even truer for Butters, who was baring his soul with every word that came out of his mouth. He wished he could give back everything Butters was giving to him. He opened his mouth, willing himself to say what Butters was saying, yet he couldn't. What _was _love, anyway? Kenny knew that was a cliché-ass question to ask, but he honestly didn't know. There was a very real possibility that he was falling in love with Butters, since he'd never romantically felt anything this strong before. That much was for sure. There was also the possibility that he had been wrong and he actually was already _in_ love and just didn't realize it, but how could he be certain? What if he was just infatuated? What if everyone felt this stupid and giddy and mushy after a month of dating? He had no idea where to even _begin _answering those questions, so no matter how badly he wanted to say 'I love you' back, he wouldn't. He couldn't, because he was afraid of being wrong and realizing too late that he wasn't in love after all. And, God, how terrible would it be to explain _that_? 'Oh, sorry, Butters, I know I said that I loved you, but in my botched attempts to make you happy, I misinterpreted my feelings of infatuation as love, so yeah, that was a mistake'? Kenny couldn't put Butters through that. And besides; Butters had said that he didn't want to pressure him, so Kenny should focus on being _not _pressured and just enjoy what he already had.

"Butters…" Kenny whispered, surprising himself with how needy he sounded. Butters paused at the sound of his name, glancing up briefly before dipping his head down to place tender, nibbling kisses along the exposed part of Kenny's collarbone. All Kenny could do was continue to caress Butters' hair and watch him, amazed. Butters was so much better - so much _stronger _- than him. Butters knew exactly how he felt and wasn't afraid of showing it time and time again. Deep down, Kenny was just a pussy. He was a pussy, and he was completely and totally _retarded _with his emotions.

Butters kissed his way back up Kenny's neck until their mouths were reacquainted with each other, sucking lightly on his lower lip before pulling away. "Was that… was that okay?" he asked, smiling shyly, like he hadn't just been doing ridiculous and wonderful things to Kenny's heart rate.

_Yes. It was amazing. You're amazing. _But Kenny was still having trouble speaking, so he cradled the back of Butters' head and kissed him like he'd never kissed before, trying to express all the thoughts that were racing in his mind through every swipe of his tongue: _You are the greatest person I've ever met and I don't know how or why you could love someone like me, but thank you, thank you so much for giving me a chance, and I promise to make it up to you someday because you only deserve the best. _"Does that answer your question?" he muttered, pressing his forehead against Butters' and staring into his soulful, vulnerable eyes. Butters had pretty eyes, a simple light blue at first glance but inset with hundreds of tiny hazel flecks surrounding the pupil.

Those pretty hazel-flecked blue eyes widened with understanding as Butters nodded, like he _could _somehow read Kenny's thoughts just through the way he'd kissed him. "Yeah. I think so," he said, giving Kenny another one of those heartbreakingly honest grins. "So I didn't… make you feel weird? In a bad way?" Kenny shook his head and Butters sighed, visibly relieved.

"I'm sorry," Kenny apologized suddenly.

Butters frowned. "Why? You haven't done nothin' wrong."

Kenny chewed on the inside of his cheek. "For not being able to say it back yet. I mean, I'm sure I'll be able to say it someday - I _want _to say it - but I just… I can't. Not right now, at least."

Butters sighed again, this time out of regret. "I _am _makin' you feel pressured, huh," he guessed. Kenny opened his mouth to protest, but Butters continued, taking Kenny's hands in his own, "Now, you listen here: I'd be lyin' if I said I didn't wish you could say it back to me. I think most folks in a relationship wish the same exact thing. But you can't, an' I understand completely. It's natural. Love is a great thing, Kenny." At this, Butters' eyes grew fuzzy. Wistful. "The _greatest_ thing there is, actually. For some folks, it comes easy, an' for others… well, not so easy. It's kinda like… hm… gosh, I dunno how to explain it." The bridge of Butters' nose wrinkled in concentration, and then smoothed out again as his face lit up. "I know: it's like a flower! See, it starts out as just this tiny little seed, but if you keep givin' it water an' sunlight, eventually it gets bigger an' more beautiful. Love is a lot like that. It starts out small, but if the right stuff happens, if you keep nurturin' it, it becomes more than that, just like a seed becomes a flower. An' it don't happen overnight. It can take days, weeks, months, or years, dependin' on the person an' the circumstances. For me, it happened pretty quickly once I got to know you good enough, but I guess I just gave mine a whole lotta water an' sunlight." He smirked. "Yours… well, I don't think it's had none of that stuff yet. Yours might take a little longer ta grow. An' you know what? That's okay, 'cause everyone's different. I've told you before, Kenny, an' I'll tell ya again: I don't mind waitin'. I've waited 5 years for you to feel even a little bit of what I feel for you. I'll wait as long as it takes for you to say 'I love you' an' mean it, too." He kissed the back of Kenny's right hand. "But until the day that happens, I'll make sure your seed gets everything it needs to grow into a big, beautiful flower. Okay?"

The part of Kenny that was still immature and 9 years old was tempted to respond with some innuendo-filled comment about his seed and what he would like Butters to do with it, but the rest of him was thankfully able to read the gravitas of the situation. He watched Butters as Butters watched him back, patiently, always so fucking patient. Kenny wished he had Butters' patience. More than that, though, he just wished he had Butters' _understanding_. He wished he could look at the world with something other than apathy. He wished he could let go and allow himself to feel and live freely. Classmates and acquaintances thought Kenny was carefree in spite of his hard life; they'd see him pass in the hallway and think, '_oh, there's Kenny McCormick, did you hear about how he had to get his stomach pumped last weekend and went to ANOTHER party the day after? What a guy!_', if they noticed him at all. They heard his perverted jokes, saw the crazy things he did for money or even a simple scrap of approval, and thought that he was either fucked in the head or fearless. And while Kenny was inclined to believe the former was kind of true, the _real _reason for his sometimes crazy behavior was simple: it was a distraction. Sex, alcohol, humor… they were all ploys to distract him from the omnipresent paranoia that lurked in the back of his mind. Kenny had learned from an early age that he was different, that things rarely went the way they were supposed to go for him. He could be happy, laughing and breathing and living one minute, and the next, he'd find his guts spilled across the hot pavement or his bones crushed by a falling piano, dead. There was no rhyme or reason to his life. Nothing made sense. There was a dark period of time when he _had _let the paranoia take over, and he spent almost a whole year living in fear - always waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. But he quickly realized that this was no way to live. He couldn't control his sporadic deaths, so why piss and moan and be scared about them? It took Kenny a long time to come to terms with his mortality (or lack thereof), and when he finally did, it wasn't in probably the healthiest way imaginable.

He discovered that if he didn't think about the deaths, he could almost pretend they didn't exist. So he filled his time and mind with everything _but _death: he had sex with people he did and didn't know, hung out with Stan and Kyle to an almost obsessive point (even if he was always the third wheel), and when none of that worked, he'd _force _his mind to forget by practically drinking himself into a coma. It didn't take superhuman hindsight to realize how screwed up all of his supposed 'coping' habits were, so he turned to helping people. Kenny had always liked helping people; it was in his nature. It also had the dual bonus of making others feel better about themselves while at the same time allowing Kenny to forget about his own problems. Sometimes, he forgot them so well that he was even surprised when a car veered off the road and crashed into him, and before he blacked out and inevitably woke up in his bed, he would look down at the blood spattered across his chest and think, '_Well, fuck, didn't see THAT one coming_' with a morbid chuckle.

But no matter which way Kenny spun it, his ignorance of his own problems came down to just that: ignorance. He started out just trying to ignore death, but as time went on, this ignorance seeped into other areas of his life, too. Eventually, he found himself ignoring his feelings altogether. And after so many years of locking up those feelings and shoving them aside, he couldn't find the key to unlock them now, when he really _needed _them. He wanted to be attuned to his feelings and be able to understand and explain them in extended metaphors, just like Butters. He _wanted_ to be able to grow and cultivate his love, but he didn't know _how _to. "Okay," Kenny conceded, inhaling a shaky breath. "But… how do you know? When you're in love, I mean."

Butters leveled him with a measured look before he grew more introspective. "Hm…" he began, absentmindedly adjusting the collar of Kenny's coat. "Geez, I don't got any big speeches to explain _this _one. It's just… you just… you just _know _when you're in love, 'cause it's like nothin' you've ever felt before. Or at least, that's what it was like for me. It might be different for other fellas."

Kenny frowned. If that was true, and the only way of being able to tell whether or not you were in love was based on some innate 'knowing', then he was definitely screwed for life. "Okay," he said again, trying not to sound as disappointed as he felt. Maybe some people _did _just 'know' when they were in love; people like Butters, who were more in touch with their emotional side. But maybe there was a different process for people like him, the ones that were love-retarded. He would definitely have to look into that. "Thanks."

Butters kissed the tip of his nose. "You're askin' an awful lot of questions tonight." His tone wasn't accusatory; just curiously observant. "Is somethin' wrong?"

Kenny shrugged, trying to come off as noncommittal but most likely failing miserably. "Nothing's wrong. I've just been thinking a lot, I guess. I feel bad for grilling you like this, but… you're so good at this kind of stuff, and you know a hell of a lot more about it than I do." He dug the heels of his hands into his closed eyes. "God, I just feel so _stupid_. You know, there's a reason why I didn't want anyone knowing what the fuck I was saying for the first - what, 12? - years of my life."

Butters took a hold of his wrists and gently pulled them away, making Kenny open his eyes again. "Well, first of all, you ain't stupid. I woulda never liked you so much if you were just another dummy. So don't go sayin' that, 'cause it's about as far from the truth as you can get. An' second of all, it's okay if you got problems. Everyone does. Lord knows I got a bunch of 'em!" He laughed, though it felt forced. "But, see, even that's okay, 'cause acceptin' the other person for their good parts an' bad parts is what a relationship is all about. You're perfect to me, Kenny, but if there's somethin' about yourself that you'd like changed, then I'll be there every step of the way to help you get there. An' I'm always willin' to listen if there's anything you wanna talk about - _anything_. You know that. All I ask is that you accept me, too, if that's not too hard."

Kenny felt an almost palpable weight being lifted off his shoulders. They were so wonderfully, beautifully fucked up, both of them. He was dumb as a rock when it came to emotions, and Butters was so smart about them to the point where he was almost _over_emotional. He was grounded, while Butters floated through life. Kenny was a dose of reality, and Butters was a living reminder of all that was still pure and fantastical in the world. They were flawed on their own, but when put together, they were perfect. They were each others' missing puzzle piece. Kenny had spent all his life sacrificing himself for the sake of others, and here was someone who was willing to help _him _out. It was hard to believe, but somehow, things were starting to look a little brighter. "Already done," he assured Butters, wrapping his arms around the other boy and pulling him into a hug.

Butters reciprocated graciously, leaning in until their cheeks were brushing. "Thanks, Ken," he murmured, his warm breath tickling Kenny's skin.

"No problem," Kenny replied. "Thank _you_." He let out a long and happy sigh, feeling peace spread outward from the pit of his stomach to the tips of each extremity. All his senses revolved around Butters: the calming sound of Butters' steady, even breathing in his ear; the scent of sugar cookies and grass, Butters' natural cologne; the faint - barely even noticeable - sensation of Butters' heart beating a tattoo against his chest. Kenny liked that one the best. He experimentally slid one hand up Butters' back, across the nape of his neck, and curled around ringlets of downy, tousled blond hair. Butters' heartbeat flopped and stumbled over itself before growing faster. Kenny smiled to himself, realizing with a touch of incredulity that his own heart was doing the same thing. He wondered if Butters could feel it too.

His suspicion was confirmed a moment later when Butters' hand slipped underneath the open flap of his coat, stopping just over Kenny's heart. For a moment, Butters was silent, his fingers fanning out and lightly pressing down on the area through the cotton material of a t-shirt. "Wow," he breathed, rearing back slightly to stare at Kenny's chest with an expression akin to a little kid's on Christmas morning.

Kenny looked away, feeling embarrassed as his heart thumped even faster. "Um, yeah," he muttered lamely.

"Wow," Butters repeated, sounding just as amazed as the first time. Kenny drummed his fingers against the park bench, and Butters retracted his hand quickly, looking sheepish. "Sorry. But…" His eyes swum with affection, and his snow-white teeth flashed in the semidarkness. "I'm just mighty happy right now."

Those were the words that Kenny had been waiting for: _Butters was happy_. His motives behind agreeing to go out with him were suddenly validated. All the nights spent tossing and turning, grappling with himself, wondering if he was doing the right thing… well, now he knew. "Me too," Kenny agreed, grinning widely.

And for the first time in a long time, he meant it.

* * *

The first thing Kenny realized when he woke up was that his hands were positioned, quite stubbornly, between Butters' ass and the back of the bench.

It took him a few seconds to adequately process this, and when he did, he laughed so hard he thought Butters would wake up. But Butters remained blissfully ignorant of Kenny's unconscious perversion, his mouth parted slightly to allow soft snores to tumble out as he slept. Kenny was thankful for this; while he was sure that Butters probably wouldn't object too much to getting felt up by him, he imagined that it would probably still feel pretty awkward. After a good deal of yanking, he was able to pull his hands free and rest them on the cold surface of the bench, in the very small space between his and Butters' bodies.

As his senses gradually reawakened, he became more aware of his surroundings. Butters' arms were wrapped around his waist, and he was using Kenny's upper arm as a pillow, which would explain the numbness in that area of his body. Kenny didn't really want to move his arm, though. Butters was too adorable when he slept. His hair was completely awry, sticking out here and there in an extreme case of bedhead, and his cheek was all bunched up from where it rested against Kenny's arm. Every few seconds, he would snuffle quietly and scoot closer. Kenny was reminded of a litter of puppies he'd temporarily adopted over the summer and kept inside a large cardboard box. For the first few weeks of their life, when they were blind, they would constantly wriggle toward each other in search of warmth. Butters was a lot like a puppy, Kenny decided: energetic, loyal, and filled with a seemingly never-ending store of love and affection.

Kenny was gripped with the sudden urge to do something sappy, but he was distracted by the consciousness that was continuing to flow back into him. He glanced up at the sky, noting that it was a dusty grayish-blue overhead but lighter on the horizon, and came to a startling discovery: he and Butters were still at Stark's Pond, and it was already morning.

And thus, Kenny's first fully-formed thought of the day was born: _Aw, shit_.

Fighting the rising feeling of dread, he dug around in his coat pocket until he found something square and cold and black, and pulled out his welfare Tracfone. The bold numbers on the screen read _5:03 AM. _"Fuck," Kenny growled, shoving it back in his pocket and carefully moving Butters' head before sitting upright. Pain immediately shot up his spine, sending lightning bolts of discomfort through the muscles in his upper body. He winced, reminding himself that he had been through far, _far _worse, and slowly crawled off the bench until he was kneeling beside it on the ground.

"Butters," he hissed, grabbing the sleeping boy's shoulder and giving it a light shake. "Hey, Butters. Wake up."

Butters' face twitched with mild annoyance. "Hnn… just a sec…," he grumbled, halfheartedly swiping at the air.

Kenny rolled his eyes. As much as Butters still had the mentality of a little kid, there were moments like this when he was such a _teenager_. "Butters," Kenny stated seriously. "It's Kenny."

That seemed to do the trick. Butters' eyes slowly fluttered open, revealing twin light blue orbs hazy with sleep. They disappeared again as Butters blinked, once, twice, three times, finally opening all the way again as his face took on a satisfied glow. "Hey there, darlin'," he greeted, his voice low and heavily-accented from sleep. "Mmm, I wouldn't mind wakin' up to your handsome face _every_ mornin'."

Butters puckered his lips and leaned in for a kiss. Despite the overwhelming urge to get out of there as fast as humanly possible, Kenny obligingly returned the kiss, because really, who in their right mind could resist Butters when he was all tired and flirty and using terms of endearment? Kenny certainly didn't have that kind of willpower. But he _did _have enough willpower to be the first to pull away, and to also halt Butters' quest for early-morning nookie as the other boy attempted to kiss any other reachable part of Kenny. "Hold your horses, loverboy," he instructed, grabbing Butters' dazed face and holding it still. "We gotta haul ass."

Butters shot him a look of pure incomprehension. "We need to leave," Kenny clarified. "Right now."

Butters frowned. "Was it somethin' I did?"

"No, you didn't do anything. It's morning."

Butters glanced up at the brightening sky, then grinned cheekily. "I-I can see that."

Kenny pulled his hands away from Butters' face to massage his own temples. He fucking hated mornings. His brain wasn't able to process _anything_, and apparently, this was even truer for Butters, who was staring at Kenny like he was speaking in tongues. "We fell asleep," he ground out. "Last night. We weren't supposed to do that. And now it's morning."

Butters continued to look at him blankly before pressing a palm to Kenny's forehead. Kenny swatted it away, sighing. "I don't have a fever, Butters. It's _morning_. 5:00 in the morning, actually. You know what time I was supposed to take you home?" More blank stares. "_Not _five-fucking-o'clock, that's when!"

Comprehension hit Butters like a freight train. "O-Oh, Jesus!" he squeaked, sitting up so fast he almost smacked his head on the arm of the bench. "We gotta get bookin'!"

"That's kind of what I was trying to say," Kenny replied, smiling as Butters fumbled around for his parka in the dark. "I know some back roads. If we move fast enough, we can make it to your house in half an hour."

Butters picked up the parka, dusted off some snow, and slipped his arms into it, looking disproportionately apologetic. "Gee, Kenny. I'm sorry for noddin' off on you, an' makin you spend the whole night with me. It's so cold… you coulda gotten sick, a-an' it'd be all my fault!"

Kenny shrugged. "It's not a problem. I don't feel sick; just achy from that stupid bench." He squinted, trying to recall the previous night's chain of events. "And anyways, I can't remember who did it first. For all I know, we could've both fallen asleep at the same time."

Butters blinked groggily. "Right. I don't remember much about how we fell asleep, myself. I remember talkin' a lot, an' then… well, nothin'."

Kenny shook his head. "Same here. Not that it really matters anymore." He grabbed Butters' hand. "C'mon. Let's get you home."

And so Kenny walked Butters through town - or dragged, more like. Butters was evidently still very tired and confused, because he kept doing things like turning down the wrong road and almost walking into stop signs, and every few minutes Kenny would have to remind Butters of their destination and pull him back onto the sidewalk. Kenny didn't mind it; he thought Butters was stupidly endearing when tired, with his half-lidded eyes and spacey smile and over-exaggerated yawns. Almost _too _endearing. Kenny cast an occasional glance at his wristwatch and found himself torn between wanting to get Butters home as fast as possible and dillydallying around some more. On one hand, the sooner Butters was home and safely in bed, the less likely it was that Butters would get in trouble with his parents. That was a good thing. But at the same time, Kenny didn't _want _Butters to go home. Ideally, he'd like to spend the rest of the day with him, although that seemed highly unlikely. He'd have to wait until tonight to see Butters again. The prospect of spending 12+ hours without Butters was frightening - and just the fact that he found it frightening scared Kenny. God, he was becoming codependent.

Kenny's ETA of 30 minutes ended up being correct. By the time they reached the end of Butters' road, the first rays of morning sunlight were beginning to break over the horizon, washing the neighborhood in a dusky hue. The ice cracked under Kenny's boot as he turned to face Butters. "Well, this is it, I guess," he remarked, forcing a smile. "Are you going to be able to get back in your house again?"

Butters nodded, returning the smile. "Yep. I got some secret passageways leadin' to my bedroom."

Kenny raised an eyebrow. "No kidding?"

Butters wiggled his fingers. "Professor Chaos," he intoned in a deep voice, grinning evilly (or as evil as Butters could possibly look). "'Member?"

"Oh, that's right," Kenny said with a smirk as memories came flooding back. "You're my archenemy." He elbowed the younger blond playfully. "But if you have all these secret passageways… why the hell would you jump out a window?"

Butters scratched the back of his head. "Uh, I dunno why, really. I-I think I was tryna look cool," he admitted, chuckling self-consciously. "Yeah, it didn't work out."

"Well, just don't do it again," Kenny advised firmly. "You could break your leg or bust your head open or something. And that would suck."

"Really," Butters drawled. "'Cause I was kinda lookin' forward ta bein' hospitalized."

Kenny frowned at Butters' shit-eating grin. "I'm serious, Butters. Please don't hurt yourself just so you can see me." He was already plagued with guilt over the emotional pain it would cause Butters if the boy realized why Kenny had agreed to go out with him; the lastthing he needed to worry about was Butters being _physically_ hurt because of him.

"I won't," Butters reassured, squeezing Kenny's hand comfortingly. "So don't go worryin' yourself over little ol' me. I'll be fine."

Kenny nodded, satisfied with the answer. "Okay. That's a relief."

Butters leaned up to give Kenny a swift kiss on the cheek. "'Bye, Ken. Take care of yourself." With one last affectionate smile, he turned around and began to walk in the opposite direction, but got only two paces before he abruptly stopped and tossed a knowing grin over his shoulder. "Kenny…? You gotta let go of my hand now."

"Hah. Right." Feeling the heat rising to his cheeks, Kenny quickly disentangled his fingers from Butters' and shoved the lone hand in his pants' pocket. Butters giggled. "So… see you tonight?" he asked as casually as possible. He hadn't acted like this much of a bumbling, stumbling idiot in a long time. It was kind of jarring.

"Of course!" Butters enthused. "I wouldn't miss it for nothin'. See ya then, Kenny."

He watched as Butters walked away, smiling softly to himself. So maybe he was love-retarded, and maybe he would always be kind of emotionally dense. But Butters still loved him in spite of that, and even if Kenny _wasn't_ in love, it didn't take a genius to know that he was starting to feel strongly for the other boy.

And maybe that was good enough for now.


	14. Policy of Truth

**A/N: **...aka, "The Chapter in Which Cartman is a Dumbass Who Ruins Everything for Everyone".

Yeah. You probably know what's goin' down in this one.

**Disclaimer: **South Park belongs to the geniuses known as Matt Stone and Trey Parker. "Policy of Truth" belongs to Depeche Mode, "I Wanted You To Feel the Same" belongs to The Radio Dept., and "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" belongs to Wham! (why so much music in this chapter? I'm not really sure)

**Chapter 13**

_It breaks my heart to say that when I was in pain  
I wanted you to feel the same  
But nothing gets you really  
It's a shame  
I can't believe you didn't feel a thing  
I wanted you to feel the same _

**-**"I Wanted You to Feel the Same" by The Radio Dept.

Wendy considered herself many things, but a cheater was not one of them.

Obviously, no one puts "once kissed ex-boyfriend while dating someone else" on their job application - at least, no one in their right mind - but Wendy would not, _could _not, even admit to herself that she was a cheater. Mostly, it was because the label of a cheater contradicted with everything that she knew and accepted about her own character. Wendy was intelligent, ambitious, mature, and with a high sense of integrity to boot. To consider herself a cheater, Wendy would have to disregard all of those aforementioned traits completely. Cheating was not intelligent, ambitious or mature. In her mind, it might as well be an antonym to everything that was good and holy in this world.

So Wendy, through the power of self-convincing (_not _denial, dammit), was able to believe that the kiss she'd shared with Cartman on Christmas Eve was nothing more than a slip-up on her part. She'd been caught up in the heat of the moment, that was all. It was just like the time she'd kissed Cartman back when they were working on that stupid flag project; she'd needed a way to let out her feelings, and once it was done with, she could stow those feelings away in the far recesses of her mind and never think or act on them again.

But as time went by, it became more and more startlingly clear to Wendy that this kiss was not at alllike the one they'd shared at the flag debate. She was able to forget about Cartman and return to her pristine 3rd grade life in the aftermath of the first kiss. He rarely, if ever, crossed her mind again in a romantic way until the end of middle school. Nowadays Cartman was just about the _only _thing that crossed her mind, and the kiss didn't get rid of her feelings; in fact, she'd go so far as to say it had even magnified them. The memory of the kiss was a rash, an itch that she could not scratch. No matter how much lip gloss she put on, the fruity tang could not mask the taste of Oreos, which seemed annoyingly determined to live inside her mouth and cling to her lips for the rest of her life. No matter how many times she stood under the showerhead, alternating between blistering hot and freezing cold, the water could not wash away the lingering ghost of Cartman's touch on her skin. No matter how hard she tried to forget, she couldn't, and it pissed her off to no end. "You should totally just 'Eternal Sunshine' that bitch," Bebe had advised helpfully. Wendy could only _wish _that operation was real.

So in lieu of a memory-wiping procedure, she came to the conclusion that the best way to forget about her ex-boyfriend was to spend as much time as humanly possible with her _real _boyfriend. At first, this was a problem; Token was, of course, spending the majority of Christmas break in the Virgin Islands, but Wendy summoned every vestige of womanly charm in her possession and used it to convince Token that she would positively _die _if she went another day without him. (She also paid the hotel the Blacks were staying at to make up some bullshit story about a mutant rat infestation and shut down for the time being, but Wendy liked to think that her womanly charm was the key factor here.)

She actually hadn't been lying when she said she missed Token. Her feelings for Cartman notwithstanding, Wendy really _did _care for Token and enjoyed being in his company. Token was the smartest guy she knew, and a loving and doting boyfriend on top of that. He was closer to perfection than any of her previous boyfriends had ever been. In fact, his only real flaws were his absentmindedness (like showing up an hour late for a dinner date at Sizzler) and the occasional arrogance that stemmed from his family's ridiculous amounts of wealth, but Wendy honestly only remembered to show up early for dates because she was anal retentive like that and God knew she had her fair share of arrogant moments, so it all balanced out. Any girl would be lucky to have Token. _She _was lucky to have Token.

Wendy was sitting at her kitchen table as she thought about all this, staring down blankly at the spectrum of colorful Uno cards in her hand. After a moment, she heard a polite cough and looked up at Token, who was sitting directly across from her, looking curious and bemused.

"Wendy," he chided gently, "It's your turn to play. If you don't have a 7 or a green card, you can take one from the draw pile."

Wendy blinked. "Oh," she muttered, shaking her head slightly to clear it. "Right. I know that." There was a small part of her that wished he would've called her 'bitch' or 'ho' instead of 'Wendy'. How fucked up was _that_?

"Well, you have a funny way of showing it," Token teased.

"Hey," Wendy defended herself, "It's all part of my strategy." She pulled out a green 5 and laid it on top of the small pile in the center of the table.

Token swiftly tossed out a yellow 5. "Does this strategy involve you convincing me that you've lost a few brain cells over Christmas break? Because if so, it's working." He flashed her a brilliantly radiant, white-toothed grin, the kind Wendy would expect to see plastered over billboards.

Wendy considered flipping Token off, but her parents were in the other room (hence why they were playing Uno instead of doing more… romantic activities) and she only allowed herself that kind of behavior around Cartman anyway. Instead, she took a Draw 4 card and slapped it down on the table. "So much for lost brain cells, huh?" she retorted, raising her chin triumphantly.

"Evil woman," Token grumbled as he withdrew four cards. "What color are you gonna change it to?"

_Cartman could've come up with a better insult than that_, Wendy thought to herself, and immediately cringed. Goddammit, there she went again; comparing Token to Cartman. She wasn't supposed to be doing this anymore, especially because she knew that there was really no comparison between the two at all. They were completely different people. And besides, Cartman wasn't even part of the equation. Tonight, it was just her and Token, and that's how it was supposed to be. Why couldn't she just be satisfied with that? She felt safe and happy around Token. But despite that, there was the little inkling in the back of her mind that told her something was missing. There was no electricity. There was no real passion. That wasn't a problem for her and Cartman, since they had tension in spades. What she _didn't _have with Cartman, however, was the security of her relationship with Token. The irony of the whole situation was that both relationships were flawed on their own, but when their attributes were combined they basically formed the perfect relationship. Was it even possible to be both passionate and secure? Or would it always be a trade-off between the two?

"Wendy," Token said again, this time sounding less gentle and more mildly annoyed.

Wendy refocused her gaze on him. "What?"

"You were spacing out." He frowned and set his cards face down on the table. "This is like the third time today. Is something wrong?"

_Yes. _"No," Wendy replied, a little too quickly. "Nothing's wrong." Her face was beginning to flood with self-conscious warmth and she hoped that she didn't look as nervous as she felt.

Token sighed and ran a hand through his hair, then let it fall limply onto the table. His shoulders stiffened. "Did Cartman do something to you?" he asked, eyes flashing with protectiveness and a hint of jealousy.

Wendy tensed as well, but out of offense rather than resentment. "No, he didn't, actually!" she retorted. "Jesus Christ. He's an intolerant asshole, but he's not a _rapist _or anything. Give me a break."

"Are you _defending_ him?" Token demanded, awestruck.

"I'm saying that you're overestimating him," Wendy replied smoothly. "That's all."

She leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly, and sent him a challenging glare. He attempted to return it with equal fervor, but soon gave up. It was nearly impossible to beat Wendy Testaburger in a staredown. "Alright," Token conceded, holding his hands up in surrender. "I can see that this is still a sore spot for you. Forget I said anything."

Wendy nodded in acceptance, though she couldn't help but feel bad. She could deny it until she was blue in the face, but Token was completely on point and he had every right to be suspicious, knowing full well of her (ongoing) history with Cartman. Token knew, Cartman knew… hell, the whole _world _basically knew that she was still uncomfortably attached to Eric. Bebe's earlier assessment of her situation suddenly came back to her: _"Okay, but is dating one guy while being in love with another really that much more fair?" _The answer then had been 'no', and now it was an even more resounding negative, with big bold letters and excessive exclamation points. She couldn't go on like this much longer, and neither could Cartman or Token.

Wendy opened her mouth, fully prepared to apologize or tell Token the whole truth, but her inevitable word-vomit was prevented by the faint sound of music. She snapped her mouth shut and strained to hear it, wondering if the noise was just her imagination and she _had _finally gone crazy after all. But Token also cocked his head in order to hear better, so that ruled out the 'it's just my imagination' theory.

"Um… do you…?" Token asked, his eyebrows swooping downward.

"I hear it," Wendy confirmed. She glanced in the direction of the kitchen window. "I think it's coming from my backyard. Wait here, I'll check." She pushed out her chair and stood up, her bare feet gliding across the cold tile floor as she walked toward the bay window just above the sink. Sliding her fingers between the slats, she pried them open and peered through, squinting to see in the dusky light of sunset. What she saw pretty much confirmed that she had officially lost her mind once and for all: Eric Cartman was in her backyard (no one else had that big of a silhouette), and he was standing in front of what appeared to be a group of 20 or so singing children. She blinked once. She blinked twice. She closed her eyes, rubbed them furiously, and reopened them. The scene remained the same.

"…WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS TOWN?" she bellowed, resisting the urge to tear down the blinds.

"That's not a good sign," Token commented. She looked over at him and noticed that he was frowning concernedly. "What's wrong?"

Wendy considered telling him that Eric Cartman was conducting a children's orchestra in her backyard, or just dragging him in front of the window and letting him see for himself because this was one of those 'you have to see it to believe it' things, but she ultimately decided against it. She would like to keep Token and Cartman as far away from each other as physically possible. "Nothing," she lied. "Well, no. Something _is _wrong. But I can handle it by myself."

Token stared at her for a moment, as if to protest, but he didn't. He knew better than anyone else that if Wendy said she could handle it, then she could damn well handle it. Simple as that. "Okay," he said at last. Wendy grabbed her coat off the counter and gave Token a swift kiss before heading out the back door.

She wasn't sure what she was expecting to find. Maybe Cartman was just trying to get her attention. Maybe he was showing off. Or - and this was the worst one - maybe he was attempting to serenade her. The thought of it made her cringe. Contrary to popular belief, Cartman _did _have occasional romantic moments, but only when he wasn't trying. When he tried to be suave, the results were usually disastrous. Case in point: the first and only time he made a mixtape for her, every song was either about breaking up, rough sex, or one night stands (he later confessed to not listening to the lyrics). So Wendy prepared herself for the inevitable secondhand embarrassment that she would receive if Cartman was truly attempting to woo her.

But he wasn't.

Even before she was completely outside, she could hear every single word that was being sung loud and clear by the group of grade school kids: "On Monday she's a bitch, on Tuesday she's a bitch, on Wednesday through Saturday she's a bitch! Then on Sunday, just to be different, she's a super king kamehameha _biaaatch_!"

Wendy watched as Cartman conducted the choir, deciding that she'd never felt so completely and utterly confused in her 16 years of life. Why was Cartman singing the infamous "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" song in her backyard? She closed the door shut behind her as loud as possible, hoping to make her entrance known above the sounds of the offensive musical number.

Almost immediately, Cartman shot a glance over his shoulder, and their gazes locked from across the yard. Doubt and fear flickered briefly in his cocoa-brown eyes, but it was gone so fast that Wendy thought she might have just imagined it. He turned around to face her fully, a megaphone raised to his lips, which were curved in a malicious grin. Before Wendy could so much as cover her ears, Cartman was belting with gusto, "HAVE YOU EVER MET MY EX, WENDY? SHE'S THE BIGGEST BITCH IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD! SHE'S A MEAN OLD BITCH AND SHE HAS STUPID HAIR, SHE'S A BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH!"

Wendy's hands remained limp at her sides, her jaw in a similarly slack position. She knew that Cartman was being a complete and total dick right now. She knew she should be pissed at him. Hell, if it was anyone else, she would already be wringing their neck. But she couldn't feel anything other than shock and, most prominently, an overwhelming sense of guilt. Cartman had been chasing after her for four years, and thus far he had never done anything to spite her. He had never meddled in any of her following relationships; in fact, he would basically bend over backwards to stay as far removed from her love life as humanly possible. And he had certainly never tried to hurt _her _directly. All the things that were a part of Cartman's usual M.O. - blackmail, public humiliation, general scathing behavior - had not once been applied to her. With the exception of their usual biting insults and acerbic nicknames, he had been uncharacteristically civil toward her after the end of their relationship. Wendy had thought that it was too good to last, and now she knew for sure that her presumption was correct. Something in Cartman had finally snapped. Or maybe he'd just gotten sick of his feelings being toyed with. Whichever it was, Wendy knew that only she could be held responsible for it. She'd been stupid to break up with Cartman in the first place. She'd been even stupid_er_ to continue to ignore him and his advances over the next four years, knowing full well deep inside herself that she was still in love and he probably was, too. She'd made mistakes, and now she was paying for them. This was her retribution. The floodgates were open.

But Wendy still had her pride, and she would maintain at least some semblance of dignity while accepting her punishment. She raised her chin and looked into his eyes, expecting to see rage, mania, or even a sort of grim satisfaction in their depths. None of the aforementioned emotions were present. Instead, Cartman looked almost regretful despite the rancorous smirk that was perched upon his lips, faltering every few seconds as he glanced at the house behind Wendy, like he was waiting for something else to happen. She wondered if this was at all hard on him.

The song came to a dramatic end and Cartman just stood there in the aftermath, his shoulders heaving with breathlessness as he stared at her through narrowed eyes. A silent challenge. When Wendy remained outwardly unfazed, Cartman slid a hand underneath his bright blue hat to scratch his head and then turned away from her, facing the choir once more. "Very nice," he praised in that overly-saccharine way of his. "Very nice indeed. But African tribal children… you were a little flat." After dismissing the young ones, he placed his hands on his hips and strutted toward Wendy. "Ah. Doesn't that totally bring back memories?" he inquired once he was close enough. "How I love recreating classic songs for the younger generation of South Parkians!"

Wendy looked away, clenching and unclenching her fists. "Sure," she mumbled.

A long silence. "You're not pissed off at me," Cartman observed.

Wendy looked up at him again to see that he was frowning. Why did he look so disappointed? Wasn't this what he wanted: to break her down until she was unable to fight anymore? "No, I'm not, for once. I deserved that. There, I said it." She sighed. "I know I'm a bitch. And I'm sorry. Was that appropriately apologetic enough for you?"

Cartman's eyebrows, tinted auburn in the red light of the setting sun, rose nearly to his hairline before abruptly dropping again. "I don't want you to be apologetic," he growled slowly. "I _want _you to fight with me."

Wendy blinked. "…What? Why?"

"So Token can get his black ass out here. Duh." Cartman glanced over her head, frowning to himself before scowling once more. "I said 'fight with me', you stupid skank!" he hissed urgently. "NOW FIGHT WITH ME!"

Wendy felt some of that familiar Cartman-induced irritation flooding back into her. "Why do you _want _to fight with me?" she demanded almost hysterically. "Jesus fucking Christ, Cartman! One day you're asking me to kiss you, and then… then you go and pull _this _on me? Make up your mind!"

Approval glimmered in Cartman's eyes. "Me? Make up _my _mind?" he laughed bitterly. "That's fucking hilarious coming from _you_, bitch! That's fucking _rich_! Tell me: do you write your own material?"

"Why are you such an asshole?" Wendy retorted, growing angrier by the second. She didn't know why she was debasing herself by arguing with him, but then again, why did _anyone _ever fight with Eric Cartman? To do so willingly was an exercise in futility. There was no way to win. But people rarely _chose_ to fight with Cartman; he was a pit of quicksand, grabbing a hold and yanking you down to his level whether you wanted to be there or not, and Wendy was caught in the death grip of his anger.

"WHY DID _YOU _KISS ME?" Cartman roared, his nostrils flaring.

Wendy stiffened. "Don't. Talk. About. That," she commanded through gritted teeth. She hoped she didn't look as fearful as she felt.

But Cartman had always had a way of seeing every little emotion that crawled beneath the surface, despite her best attempts to hide them. He smirked coolly; his accusation had hit a nerve, and he knew it. _Relished _in it. "Why shouldn't I?" he wondered loudly, throwing his arms up in the air and circling her. "Huh? Huh? I mean, maybe _you _can scrape the sand out of your vagina and stick your head in it, but _I _can't!"

"Fine!" Wendy barked. "If you want to talk about it… okay. I can do that." She glanced back at her house, hoping that Token wasn't eavesdropping, and lowered her voice just in case. "But only if you stop being so goddamn loud. This stays between you and me."

The next thing Cartman did was so small, so miniscule, that Wendy almost didn't notice it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of his large thumbs depressing the 'ON' button. Icy apprehension gripped her like a vice. "Cartman," she warned, "If you say _anything _into that megaphone, I'll shove it so far up your ass that the whole town will be able to hear you shit yourself."

Cartman grinned, his thumb continuing to push down until the megaphone came to life with a click and a brief explosion of static. "Aw," he whined mockingly, "You sure you don't want Token knowing?"

"Don't want me knowing what?"

Wendy and Cartman turned around simultaneously to see the new addition to the conversation. Token stepped out of the doorway, his countenance smooth but suspicious as he crossed the threshold to stand beside Wendy. She didn't dare look him in the eye.

"Token!" Cartman crowed, clasping his hands together. "Welcome to the soap opera! Ms. Testaburger here will fill you in on all the juicy details you've missed so far." He waved the megaphone at Wendy in an exaggerated flourish. "Go ahead, _dear_. Let it all out. You know you want to."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Token demanded. Wendy stopped burning holes into the snow with her eyes long enough to shoot Cartman as menacing a glare as she could muster. _Don't say it. Don't say it_.

For a heartbeat, it looked like Cartman was giving her a reassuring wink. But just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, only to be replaced by an expression of smug indifference. "Why don't you ask the hippie slut?" he proposed.

"Don't call my girlfriend a slut, asshole!"

Wendy huffed. She wasn't fucking Bella Swan; she didn't need two guys fighting for her! "I can defend myself, Token."

He stared at her incredulously. "I know that," he said, his voice softening somewhat, "But you're _not _defending yourself right now. Are you just gonna stand there and take it?"

"Yes, she will, actually," Cartman interposed. "Because she knows it's true."

"What do you mean?" Token asked, eyes narrowing to slits. When Cartman didn't respond after a few seconds, he turned his probing stare onto Wendy, who was contemplating the best way to kill Cartman and hide his body without anyone noticing. "What the fuck is going _on_ here?"

For the first time since he'd come outside, Wendy looked at Token. She wished she hadn't; there was such distrust, fear, and even sadness in his expression that it nearly blew her away. Token was a good guy. He shouldn't have to feel that way. "I'm…" Wendy began slowly. Here was her chance to set things right, to get her side of the story out there… "I'm not sure."

Cartman appeared slightly disappointed, but not surprised. "Hm. Interesting explanation there, Wendy," he said, clucking his tongue disapprovingly. "Well, I guess the truth will have to come from me." He jabbed a meaty index finger at Wendy. "This ho came over to my house on Christmas Eve and kissed me."

Wendy winced. She tried to dredge up the anger and defensiveness that had coursed through her veins only moments earlier, but it was gone now, leaving only resigned guilt in its wake. There was no more denying it to herself or anyone else: she had cheated on Token. Maybe, in a sense, she'd been cheating on him all along by harboring feelings for Cartman, even if she hadn't acted on them until recently. Regardless, she now knew that she couldn't hide from the truth any longer.

"Nice try, Cartman," Token snapped, drawing Wendy's attention back to the real world. "But Wendy wouldn't do that."

"Oh really?" Cartman challenged. "You sound very confident about that, Token. Why don't you ask her yourself?"

Token looked to her, nervously awaiting a denial or affirmation. Wendy tugged down on the hem of her shirt and decided that she didn't want to give neither. Maybe if she wished hard enough, the Earth would swallow her up, and she could spend a happy eternity in the higher levels of Hell. It wouldn't be the strangest thing to happen in South Park. But as luck would have it, there was no rift in her snow-covered yard, except for the invisible one that was being driven farther between her and Token with every passing second of silence. "It's true," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

Cartman nodded. "Good, good," he cooed, lacing his fingers together around the handle of the megaphone. "Admittance is the first step. Now how about the other times? Wanna 'fess up to those, too?"

In a split second, Wendy's mood shifted from remorseful to pissed off. "There were no _other _times, you fucking dick! I kissed you ONCE!"

"Was I really that unmemorable?" Cartman wondered, his lips puffing up in a pout while his left eye twitched in what Wendy supposed was another surreptitious wink. "All those passionate liplocks, the sweet nothings, the tender caresses… They don't ring a bell for you? Damn. I _knew _I should've kept our sex tape!"

Wendy's face flooded with warmth. "I- _what_? That's impossible! We've never even HAD sex!"

"Kenny was right for once," Cartman said, whistling. "Looks like it _is _possible to screw someone's brains out. Sweet!"

Wendy shrugged off her jacket and took a step forward, fully prepared to commence with Round 2 of Wendy vs. Cartman. A satisfying shadow of fear passed over Cartman's face. Good. She wondered if he could remember the last time she'd kicked his ass: the sharp, metallic tang of his own blood saturating his mouth; the derisive sound of other classmates' laughter, directed solely at him; the looming sight of his female attacker, her profile viewed through blackened eyelids. If he didn't, that was okay, too. She was about to refresh his memory.

Or at least, she was _going _to, until a firm hand clamped down on her shoulders and kept her rooted in place. In her peripheral vision, she saw Token watching her with a mixture of pain and pity. "Wendy," he began, his voice taut, "Don't waste your energy. It's over."

"It's… I… what?" Wendy asked intelligently.

"I'm not going to play second fiddle anymore," he continued, his brow wrinkling with determination. "I thought all this shit with you and Cartman was done, but… I guess it's not. Call me if you get things figured out."

Wendy watched him walk away, torn between wanting to follow him and at least explain things from _her _point of view but knowing that it was useless. Token's reasons for leaving her were totally legitimate, and irrefutable, as well. The truth was that Cartman would always come first in her life, leaving Token to, as he put it, 'play second fiddle'. And there was really no way to argue with the truth.

The muffled sound of crunching snow was all the warning Wendy got before Cartman gently grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her close, mashing his chapped lips against hers in one swift motion. She didn't even have to think about it; she automatically kissed him back, swallowing his sigh of contentment and relief, and allowed herself to melt into his arms. But then common sense kicked back into Wendy's brain and she abruptly withdrew, using her hands on Cartman's broad chest to push him away.

"Jesus fuck," Cartman grumbled, though he was grinning happily, "Do you _always _have to be such a tease, or is this just a monthly thing, like your period?"

Wendy's hands balled into fists. "You got your wish, _Cartman_-" She only called him by his last name when he was in trouble. "-I'm REALLY fucking pissed off at you, now!"

"Why?" Cartman asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

Wendy balked. "Oh my God. How is it even _possible _to be this much of an ignorant asshole?"

"'Ey!" Cartman protested. "Don't sound so ungrateful, bitch! I just did you a big favor!"

"How is making me look like a cheating whore to my boyfriend - and, consequently, making him _break up with me _- doing me ANY favors?"

"Because you couldn't do it for yourself," he explained calmly. "You were dating Token, but you obviously must still like me, otherwise you wouldn't have kissed me on Christmas Eve. I figured that Token was the only thing stopping you from being with me. But since you're too busy riding your moral fucking high horse, and since I _don't _have any morals, I used that to my advantage and ended the relationship _for _you!" He beamed triumphantly. "See? This is a good thing! We can be together now!"

Wendy stared, waiting for the catch-22, for Cartman to drop the ruse and admit that he'd done it all just to spite her. But it never came. Cartman was being honest here; he truly wanted to be with her, and he believed that this was the best and only way for that to happen. Like everyone else who'd been acquainted with Cartman since childhood, she knew that he'd always had a twisted sense of logic, but she hadn't realized that it was _this _extreme. He didn't see anything wrong in what he'd just done. Nothing at all. "Cartman," she lamented, "I didn't _want _you to end it for me!"

In the blink of an eye, Cartman's tentative happiness had morphed into self-righteous rage. "Oh, cry me a river!" he spluttered. "What the hell was I _supposed _to do? Wait for you to make up your mind?"

"…Yes!" Wendy cried, thoroughly exasperated. "That's EXACTLY what you were supposed to do!"

For a moment, Cartman just stared at her, the whites of his widened eyes stained Venetian red in the dying light of the sun. But then, something strange happened: he started laughing. It was barely perceptible at first. His shoulders quivered, and Wendy thought he was about to cry until she noticed the dark smile poised on his mouth and heard the smothered sounds of laughter, which grew louder and clearer with each second. He tilted his head back and howled with caustic hilarity. Maybe he really _had_ snapped after all. "You just don't get it, do you?" he wondered, the words choppy and mutilated by laughter. "It's been 4 years, Wendy! FOUR GODDAMN YEARS! And guess what? They all sucked big, floppy donkey dick, because I had to spend every fucking moment watching you run around with everyone _but _me! Do you even know what that's _like_?" He gripped the sides of his hat, tugging down so hard that his knuckles turned white. "When you… when I… oh, fuck it: when you love someone so much it fucking _burns_, and they don't even _want _you? You keep telling yourself, 'oh, they'll realize how awesome I am and come back to me eventually', but they never do! NEVER! God…" His voice cracked and he looked away, wiping his eyes clandestinely on the back of his coat sleeve. When he spoke again, his voice was low. "I'm so SICK of it. I'm sick and tired of trying hard and fucking up every single time. I try to be nice, and you don't like me. I act like a total _dick_, and you hate my guts. I _wish _I could hate you." He made another noise that was caught somewhere between a chuckle and a sob and repeated, "You just don't get it, do you? You'll _never _make up your mind."

Wendy watched him wordlessly. Here was the rudest, toughest, cockiest bastard ever to walk the streets of South Park, and now he was reduced to a sniveling mess of hysterical laughter and near tears, all because of her. _She_ had done this. _She _was the cause for all of that hurt and insecurity and heartbreak. _She _had been the one to rip open his festering wounds, pouring gallons of salt into them every time she pushed aside her feelings and went out with someone else. _She_ had done all of these things, and she had done them to the boy she loved. Wendy felt like the lowest form of bitch. "I'm so sorry," she murmured. "I… I didn't know."

The words sounded pathetically anticlimactic, even to her own ears. A verbal apology didn't come _close _to making up for the years of torture she'd inflicted upon him, and he knew this, too. Still, he didn't get mad at her. He didn't continue to lash her with reminders of all she'd done wrong to him. No. Instead, he just leveled her with a steady gaze and a broken half-smile, the kind that was so rare and foreign to see on his face but was so stupidly lovable at the same time. "Yeah, you did," he replied simply, and the fact that there was not even a trace of resentment in his voice made Wendy's heart throb painfully. She searched her mind for something, _anything _to say that would adequately express her remorse, but then he straightened up and hardened his expression into that familiar Cartman scowl, eliminating any chance for more heartfelt apologies with it. "I'll tell your black asshole boyfriend that I made it all up, and you only agreed with me because I threatened you to. He'll believe it, because everyone thinks I'm a douchebag, and that's a totally douchey thing to do. Whatever. I don't really give a fuck anymore." He gave her one last long look, like he was taking a mental snapshot, and then shoved his hands into his pockets and sniffed haughtily. A last-ditch effort at casualty and composure. "See you on Monday, ho," he said, his voice trembling impalpably as he walked away with hunched shoulders.

Yes, Wendy was _definitely _the lowest form of bitch. But she was going to fix things.

* * *

Cartman was on fire.

No, not in a literal sense, and not in the cheesy pick-up line kind of way, either. There were no tangible flames crawling across his faded red jacket, seeping and singeing the pale skin underneath. There were no burn marks or blemishes; none that were visible, at least. But he knew they were there. He could feel them percolating just below the surface, the resultant wounds of a flame burning at the very core of his being, which was in turn the culmination of four years' worth of repeated inadequacy and disappointment. Each failure was like another piece of wood, piling up higher and higher until he had the beginnings of a veritable mountain. They had gathered up and sat there, unlit, before tonight. Tonight was different. Tonight, he had the matches and tinder, and tonight his soul was being set ablaze.

He supposed that it would have happened sooner or later. There had always been that spark of anger inside of him, the same spark that had allowed him to constantly degrade and belittle his friends without a scrap of remorse since preschool. Sometimes, it became more than a spark, and sometimes it motivated him to do terrible things: hurting people, both physically and emotionally, and occasionally even _killing _them. But he wouldn't be doing any of that tonight. While he was still as much of a ticking time bomb as ever, he'd learned to somewhat internalize his destructive tendencies over the years, so that _he _was the one who suffered the most from his rage more often than not. He didn't know if that was good or bad, but it was just the natural progression of things. He couldn't change even if he wanted to. So he allowed the flame to quietly burn inside of him, licking at the underbelly of his stunted heart, not feeding it but doing nothing to put it out either. Not that it mattered. He was the only one who would be burned, anyway.

As he walked down the pothole-ridden streets of suburban South Park, he felt the fire quaking inside of him, pushing and straining against his ribcage in its attempts to consume the rest of his mind and body, and realized that he didn't want to have to deal with this alone. It was rare for Cartman to admit that he needed anyone for anything, but he supposed there came a point in everyone's life where it was simply impossible to go on alone any longer. He had finally reached that point. Or maybe he had reached it a long time ago and just never realized it until now, but either way, this was the first time he'd been able to admit such a weakness to himself. He was chopping up his pride into tiny bite-sized pieces and swallowing it.

The winter wind battered his cheeks, rosy and raw from coldness, as he reached a literal crossroads. For the last 10 minutes or so, he'd been wandering aimlessly and without any real idea of where he was heading. He cleared his head of its fuzzy, introspective haze and finally gathered his bearings: he was standing at the side of the road, ankle-deep in slush, with the adjacent street leading to his house and the current one leading to Stan's, Kyle's, and Butters' neighborhood. Distance was not an issue. It would take him a nearly equal amount of time to arrive at any of these places. But he knew viscerally that wherever he _did _end up, whether it be at Stan's house or Kyle's house or the bottom of Stark's Pond, it would be preferable to his own home. The last thing he wanted was to be consoled by his mother, who would lavish him with cloying sentimentalities like "poopsiekins" and "honeybuns" like he was still a fucking five year old. In all honesty, he loved his mother; he'd always loved his mother more than anything else, even more than Wendy, and he would probably always love her, no matter how much of a whore she could sometimes (always) be. She knew him better than anyone, and that was precisely the problem. Cartman needed human companionship, but he wanted to maintain at least _some _semblance of the fortress he'd built around his emotions, and that was impossible around his mother. She could make all the walls come tumbling down with her sympathetic smile.

He also knew with an equal amount of enmity that he did _not _want to be around Stan and Kyle tonight, either. On some days when he was particularly angry, they were a good punching bag, a way to unleash his rage without being questioned as to its source, but he had a feeling that their presence would just exacerbate his bad mood tonight. There was only one option left: Butters. He supposed that, in a way, Butters had _always _been the only option. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed Butters. He needed him to such an extent that it was almost unhealthy. Since childhood, Butters had been the only person to put up with his crap time and time again, and although he still had occasional moments of rebellion or unwillingness, the blond would always come back smiling in the end. He was the exuberant sunshine to Cartman's gloomy darkness. He was the unending kindness to Cartman's anemic goodwill. He was the balanced normalcy to Cartman's off-kilter insanity. He was everything that Cartman wasn't, his antithesis as well as his best (and, really, _only_) friend. Cartman knew that Butters was the sole person who would stay unfailingly by his side through thick and thin, and he guessed that there was a part of him, deep down below the onion layers of hate and greed and animosity coating his 'human' side, that platonically loved the boy. Not that he would ever tell that to a soul, let alone Butters. Butters probably thought that Cartman hated him, and Cartman wasn't about to correct his assumption, no matter how completely false it was. He didn't want Butters weaseling his way even further into Cartman's heart, because close relationships would inevitably lead to pain and more cracks in the already-battered organ. Wendy had taught him_ that _lesson.

He stared defiantly into the bleeding sun until spots clouded his vision, and only then did he look away and continue walking down the road to Butters' house. Yes, Butters. Butters would be able to help. He was Cartman's own personal human pick-me-up, the depression medication that worked 90% of the time. _One daily dosage of Butters Stotch is proven to decrease depression, thoughts of suicide or self-harm, and general assholery. Side-effects include extreme Vaginitis and a heightened sense of homosexuality. _Cartman chuckled to himself as he pushed open the door to the Stotch household, not bothering to knock. Knocking was for pussies.

"Are you here to get gay with our son?"

Cartman paused at the bottom of the stairs to shoot Mr. and Mrs. Stotch a look of pure disgust. "What?" he squawked, resisting the urge to smash his head against the banister until all mental images of he and Butters 'getting gay' were banished. "Ewwww, sick! Hell no." Why were people so convinced that he had a faggy little crush on Butters, anyway? He hadn't done _anything _to Butters' dick in, like, 2 years. With another vague sound of disgust, he ascended the stairs and followed the sound of catchy 80s music to Butters' room.

"_Wake me up before ya go-go, don't leave me haaaangin' on like a yo-yo_…," Butters sang along heartily as he bounced around the room, washcloth in hand. He paused in front of a dresser and wiped down the brass knobs, tapping his foot rhythmically while he did so.

Cartman stifled a derisive snort. Butters would probably still be this obnoxiously upbeat when he was 90. The thought almost made him grin. Almost, but not quite. "_Wham!,_ Butters? Really?" he wondered, leaning casually against the doorway. "Could you _get _any gayer?"

At the sound of Cartman's voice, Butters tripped over a conveniently-placed pile of clothes, windmilling his arms before landing on the bed with an indignant squeak. He pushed himself back up a moment later, greeting Cartman with a radiant grin. "Oh, that's nothin'! You shoulda seen me yesterday, I-"

Cartman covered his ears and closed his eyes, attempting to stymie the return of mental images. "LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEARRRRR YOUUUU!"

When he opened his eyes a moment later, Butters was watching him with one blonde eyebrow arched. "I was jokin'," he said flatly. Cartman's expression must have remained unconvincing, because Butters proceeded to turn down the volume on the radio and raise his hands, palm-outward, in an innocent gesture. "Look, I ain't gonna do nothin' to ya, Eric. Don't be shy; come on in!"

Cartman grumbled something about vampire hickeys under his breath, mostly just for show and the fact that he always felt obligated to bitch around Butters. He stepped into the room, leaving wet, miry imprints in the carpet from his snow-soaked shoes as he flopped down on Butters' computer chair. It gave a slight creak from the addition of Cartman's impressive bulk, but he ignored it in favor of absently tapping one of Butters' pencils against the desk. The surface was covered in miscellaneous papers and packets from his AP classes. Cartman snorted. Only Butters would have and actually _do _homework over Christmas break.

"So… what brings ya here?" Cartman half-turned away from the desk to see the source of the question. Butters was sitting atop his bed, legs crossed and folded underneath him, boasting that trademark friendly Butters smile.

Cartman scowled. "Oh, I didn't realize I needed a reason to hang out with you, Your Faggyness," he retorted, resting his chin on his knuckles. "What is this, an immigration checkpoint?"

Butters' smile faltered for only the briefest of seconds. "You don't. I was just wonderin'."

Cartman blinked and slanted his eyes away, not quite sure how to respond to that. There _was _a definite reason why he chose Butters' house, and there was a definite chain of events that lead to it as well, but he didn't want to discuss either of them. He squared his shoulders stubbornly, hoping to give off as much of a 'don't wanna talk about it' air as possible. It seemed to work, because in the next moment, Butters frowned softly and unfolded his legs, walking over to the window.

"This is prob'ly about Wendy, huh?" Butters asked after a long silence, dragging the washcloth across a windowpane. The light of sunset that poured in through it gave a warm glow to Butters' face as he glanced over at Cartman. "Is she sore at you again? Or are you sore at her this time?" More silence. "Or both?"

The pencil collided with the edge of the desk for the umpteenth time, creating a loud _smack_. Cartman winced. He was facing away from Butters now, but he could hear the little sigh of understanding and pity the other boy made, and clenched his jaw in response. Why was Butters able to read him so well? Was he really that transparent? The very thought of it made him bristle with irritation. He worked so hard to remain an enigma; he didn't want anyone, let alone Butters, disturbing his careful emotional equilibrium. "Does it really matter?" he wondered aloud. "Jesus Christ, Butters. I don't want you pulling your Dr. Phil shit on me right now. And besides, you're gayer than a handbag full of rainbows, so what makes you think you know _anything _about dealing with chicks?"

"So this _is _about Wendy?"

Cartman froze, realizing too late that he'd given himself away. "I hate you from the bottomless depths of my soul, Butters," he stated slowly, seriously. It was a lie, a terrible, erroneous one, but he didn't bother correcting himself. He'd said it so many times throughout his longstanding friendship with Butters that he doubted the boy was even affected by it anymore.

But Butters obviously _was _affected by it, because Cartman saw him flinch out of the corner of his eye before masking the hurt with a look of concern. Cartman frowned. He'd come here to cheer himself up, but now he just felt like even more of an asshole than before. His plan had, as usual, backfired. Failure had become his modus operandi as of late. He was getting sick of it. "Hey!" he said, forcing himself to sound chipper as he stood up. "You know what would be, like, so totally _awesome_? If we went to that new synagogue down the street and just _wrecked _it. Kahl's gonna have more sand in his vagina than the Sahara desert when we're done." He laughed hollowly and zipped up his coat, still not facing Butters. "Sounds really coo', right?" No response. Feeling mildly annoyed, he swiveled toward the other boy, scowl firmly in place. "_Right?_" he repeated.

Butters fixed him with a measured stare. "Ya know, you can't keep runnin' from your problems, Eric."

Cartman dug the blunt edge of his fingernails into his palms. "I'm not running from my problems," he said, voice taut. As the words brushed his own ears, he didn't believe them in the slightest. He was willing to bet that Butters didn't, either. The kid was the most naïve person Cartman had ever met, sure, but he had a surprisingly good bullshit detector when it came to some things. Cartman, for example. He was one of those few things that Butters' bullshit detector had become finely attuned to over the years. It pissed him off. "I'm not a pussy."

"Oh?" Butters cocked his head to the side, still watching Cartman in that ingenuous, non-accusatory way of his. "So how come you're ignorin' whatever just happened?"

The fingernails continued to bury themselves deeper into Cartman's palms, which were still ruddy from the cold December air. "How do you know something happened?"

"'Cause I know _you_," Butters replied simply, "An' I can tell when somethin's obviously been buggin' you."

Cartman didn't respond to that for a moment. He narrowed his eyes to slits, watching Butters cross his arms over his chest in a concerted effort to look determined through them. "Congratulations, Butters," he sneered. "You noticed that I'm pissed off. Gee, I wonder what gave _that _away? Is there anything _else_ you'd like to enlighten me with, Captain Obvious?"

Butters nodded vigorously. "There's a coupla things, actually." Cartman rolled his eyes. Once again, Butters wouldn't know sarcasm if it kicked him in the balls - and it did, frequently. "Now, Eric, when you get in one of these 'moods', I don't normally say nothin', 'cause I don't wanna push you or make you steamed at me. But ya know what? I'm startin' to think that maybe I _should _be sayin' somethin'. I thought I was bein' a good friend by lettin' this go on for so long without tryna get you ta talk… but now, I'm not so sure."

Cartman gritted his teeth, his eyes screwing shut simultaneously. He didn't _want _to talk about it. He didn't want to talk about _anything_. He wanted to forget about Wendy, about Token, about how he was always fucking up. He wanted to banish all his emotions to the far recesses of his mind and be the unfeeling asshole on the inside that everyone thought he was on the outside. "You know what would make you a really sweet, bitchin' friend? If you could learn how to _shut the fuck up _every once in awhile."

"Nuh-uh!" Butters protested. "I'm not doin' it no more! I've gone on Maury Povich with balls on my chin for you, I've dressed up as a girl more times than I can count for you, heck, I've _shot _people 'cause you told me to! You think you can make me do just about anything, an', well, most of the time you can…" He scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "But I do all those things 'cause you're my best friend - you an' Kenny, anyway - an' I wanna help you an' make you happy. So no, Eric, I'm _not _gonna shut the fuck up."

"Yeah, well, fuck you!" Cartman snarled. "If you really wanna make me happy, then leave me alone, goddammit! I'm FAHN! I don't _need _your help!"

Butters pointed an index finger at Cartman wildly. "No, see, ya _do_, otherwise you wouldn't be actin' like this! That's just how you are: somethin' happens, an' you keep everything bottled up, then other stuff keeps happenin' until finally it's too much even for you, an' then you _explode_!" He hooked one thumb and pointed it at his chest, sweeping the other arm out in a dramatic gesture. "I know, 'cause I'm always the one that's pickin' up the pieces afterwards! It ain't easy bein' your cleanup crew, I'll let ya know!"

Cartman felt a twinge of guilt and fear, but he pushed it away. "Well, God, if it's such a fucking _chore _for you, then you don't have to do it anymore! You can leave, just like everybody else!"

"Even if I could, I wouldn't," Butters said, shaking his head. "It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it. An' besides; I care about you, Eric. I ain't gonna leave you. You couldmake it a little easier by actually _tellin' _me what's wrong every once in awhile, though, so I don't hafta run myself ragged tryin' to figure it out." He paused to chew on his lower lip, like he was weighing the pros and cons of what he was about to say next. "I'm, ah… should I say it? Aw, heck, I'm just gonna say it: I'm willin' ta bet that's why Wendy broke up with you. She was sick of puttin' up with it."

Cartman stiffened. "You don't know shit about why she broke up with me," he warned, his voice dangerously low.

"That may be so," Butters conceded honestly. "But do _you_?"

Cartman, perhaps wisely, declined to answer that. The truth was that he didn't know with 100% certainty why Wendy had broken up with him. She had told him that "it just wasn't working out", which was an incredibly vague explanation, and a shitty one as well (at least, to Cartman it was). He didn't believe it, and he was sure that there was a very specific reasoning behind the breakup that Wendy, for some reason, refused to impart to him. Only Wendy knew her true motives, and hell if _he _knew how to read Wendy's mind. The only thing he could do was assume that the blame rested primarily on his shoulders.

After a heavy, extended silence, Butters sighed and turned back toward the window, hands clasped behind his back. "Eric," he began, "I'm sorry that this is eatin' you up, an' I wish I could do somethin' about it, but ya know what they say: you can't help someone who doesn't wanna be helped." He grabbed his coat off a nearby bedpost and slipped his arms into it. "I gotta leave soon. Me an' Kenny are meetin' up tonight."

There was a faint upward curve to Butters' lips as he smiled, and a distant gleam to his blue eyes. It didn't take an idiot to recognize that Butters was in love. He practically _glowed _with it. Cartman knew this because he'd read so in Butters' diary, but also by virtue of being lonely. Things were different when you were constantly lonely; you noticed little things, like the couple holding hands in the lunch line, or the lovelorn way Stan glanced at Kyle when Kyle wasn't looking at him. It was like a 6th sense, but one that Cartman wished he didn't possess. It aggravated him to no end. He could feel that 6th sense tingling right now, but he felt a different sensation, as well. The fire inside of him was flaring up again, fed by the jealousy that was being poured into it like gasoline. He was jealous. He was jealous because Butters _had _someone to sneak out at night with, someone to love and to be loved back by in return, at least to some extent. Cartman had none of that. None at all. Wendy wouldn't sneak out with him at night, and she didn't love him back by any stretch of the imagination. She probably wouldn't even want to share the same breathing space as him after tonight. All those feelings of jealousy, resentment, shame, and loneliness compounded together in that moment, and the fire inside of him grew bigger and more encompassing until his esophagus burned and he blurted out, "I hope you know that Kenny doesn't even _like _you."

The reaction was immediate. Butters' eyes widened, and Cartman could clearly see the shadow of alarm that passed over his face before it smoothed out into something that resembled fake humor. "Whaddya mean?" Butters asked, chuckling nervously. "'Course he likes me. He's… he's my boyfriend. An' we've been regular friends for a long time even before that."

Cartman had heard of out-of-body experiences plenty of times on TV, in magazines and movies, but he'd never put much stock in them before tonight. He heard himself telling Butters the whole story, from the night of the sleepover to the discovery of his mental health records to Kenny's eventual agreement to go along with it; he saw the way Butters' face seemed to fall with every word that came out of his mouth, but he didn't feel like he was actually _saying _them. In his mind, he was playing out an entirely different conversation. "Kenny only agreed to go out with you 'cause he's a goddamn pussy who didn't want to hurt your feelings." _Wendy never even liked you. _"It was a pity date." _She pitied you because no one else would_. "How does it feel?" _It sucks ass. _Love _sucks ass_.

The words continued to tumble out in a rush, out and out and out until everything that Cartman had held in over the past month filled the 5 feet of air separating the two boys. When he was finished, he just stood there, contracting his fists until the faint scars that adorned his knuckles were stretched uncomfortably tight. His whole body was quivering imperceptibly in the aftermath, buzzing with a strange mixture of adrenaline and trepidation; he'd felt something akin to this before, during the numerous fights he'd gotten into over the years. He hadn't engaged in any physical altercation with Butters, but the blond looked like Cartman might as well have punched him in the face. His jaw was slightly slack, his eyes flashing with horror in the dying light of the bedroom, the two eyebrows just above them arching in on each other perplexedly. _Why? _he seemed to be asking. Cartman didn't answer.

He could read the emotional turmoil that was taking place inside Butters like an open book: it was a steady progression of shock, fear, denial, and, finally, the barest hint of acceptance, though it was still saturated with disbelief. _No. It's a lie. Eric's just lyin', _he imagined him thinking, and found himself unable to blame Butters for thinking so. Cartman lied, almost compulsively. He could take the hands of everyone in South Park and count the number of lies he'd told over the years on their collective fingers and it _still _wouldn't be enough. But this time, he wasn't lying, and he suspected that Butters was well aware of this fact.

After what seemed like hours, Butters finally tore his gaze away from Cartman and looked out the window. "Eric," he began, his voice shaking with restrained emotion, "I-I think you should leave now… please."

Cartman was, for once, more than willing to obey Butters' orders. The tense atmosphere in the room was suffocating, smothering him with the weight of all he'd done wrong. He wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. The soles of his still-damp shoes slapped wetly against the ground as he descended the stairs, not even acknowledging Butters' parents and their looks of confusion. He walked - no, _stomped _- home, and as the last rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon, plunging the town into twilit darkness, he felt his own anger beginning to ebb away, leaving only an exhausted realization in its wake. The full magnitude of what he'd just done gradually hit him: in one night, he'd managed to push away the girl he loved _and _his best friend. He'd set out to mend things, to put things right once and for all, but instead he'd broken them to an irreparable point. He had set fire to his lifelines, and now he was left to drown in the sea of his isolation. Before tonight, he thought he was just lonely, but now he knew for sure:

For the first time in his life, Eric Cartman was completely and utterly alone.

* * *

Butters could trace, with incredible clarity, the series of events that led to him falling in love with Kenny McCormick.

He supposed that the proverbial seed had been planted back when they were still in 4th grade. They were all playing superhero in Cartman's basement - all of them except Kenny, at least. Kenny wasn't just playing; for him, it was real. Butters remembered the way Kenny carried himself as he prowled back and forth across the cement floor, the determined glimmer in his hooded blue eyes, the rough (and sexy, now that Butters thought about it) edge to his voice, and recalled being thoroughly captivated by the boy in front of him. Back then, it wasn't romantic. It was a purely innocent sort of captivation. But it marked the first time Butters had found himself caught in Kenny's gravitational pull, and as the years wore on, that pull would only increase until Butters' whole world orbited around him.

Kenny further cemented his status as Butters' idol later that same night, when everyone else had gone and he surreptitiously slipped Butters a cookie through the bars of his cage. Their fingers had even brushed for a millisecond. An otherwise forgettable occasion to most people, but not to Butters, who experienced so few moments of kindness in his life that each one was carved irremovably into his brain. The smallest details still lingered with him, even to this day: the little clump of blond hair that hung down over Kenny's cowl, the tiny dimples that indented his cheeks as he dropped the Mysterion façade long enough to flash Butters a precarious smile. Butters liked that part the best. Kenny could act tough all he wanted, but Butters knew that he had the biggest heart of anyone he'd ever met. He loved him for that.

But the more that Butters pondered over it, the more he realized that his love for Kenny had roots that branched even farther back than that. In a way, it all started with Kenny's extended absence earlier that same year. Butters was supposed to fill the void left in Stan, Kyle, and Cartman's gang, and he had thought at the time that it would be a piece of cake. All he had to do was follow them on their wacky adventures and do what he was told. How hard could it be? Not that hard, until it became abundantly clear to Butters that they didn't just want another friend; they wanted another _Kenny_. "Kenny would've done it," they'd say to him, over and over again. "Kenny was so cool!" It got to the point where Butters had even wondered, in a rare moment of bitterness, _what's so great about Kenny_? He immediately felt bad for thinking such a mean-spirited thought, of course, but he spent the remainder of his elementary and early middle school years subconsciously trying to answer that question, to figure out what elusive quality Kenny possessed that made him so much better than Butters. To do this, he became closer to Kenny. For projects in school, he always picked Kenny as his partner. When they ate lunch, Kenny was the one he sat down next to. The few times that Kenny _did _speak up and ask if anyone wanted to come over to his house, Butters was the first one to voice his wholehearted consent.

Their friendship grew over the years, and as it did, Butters found more pieces of the puzzle known as Kenny McCormick until he was able to answer the question that had made them friends in the first place: _everything _was great about Kenny! He was street smart, funny, fearless, and had enough magnetism to make people want to always be around him, despite the fact that he hardly ever actually _said _anything. Basically, he was everything that Butters wasn't. Butters was almost disheartened by this revelation, but by then, it didn't really matter to him anymore. By then, his motives had shifted. Somewhere along the way, as he realized how great of a person Kenny was (and how gosh darn _hot _of a person he was, when Kenny started wearing his hood down more often), he decided that he didn't want to be Kenny anymore. No. That was a pipedream. But even if, by the grace of God, Butters _had _been able to perfectly emulate Kenny, it wouldn't matter because he wanted something even better than that. He no longer wanted to _be _Kenny; rather, he wanted to be _with _Kenny.

He guessed that, for most people, it would come as a shock to discover that you had a crush on one of your closest friends, who also just happened to be a guy. But Butters didn't even have to second guess it. For him, it was natural. The shift in his feelings toward Kenny was a welcome and gradual one. They didn't come out of the blue, and even the realization that he was gay wasn't a life-shattering one; everyone around him had been operating under the assumption that Butters was gay (or at least bi-curious) since childhood, so he'd already figured that there must be _some _truth to that if so many people thought the exact same thing. Coming to terms with his feelings for Kenny wasn't the hard part. The hard part was _acting _on them. Butters was far too nervous to just come out and tell Kenny that he 'like-liked' him, so he resorted to flirtation and hint-dropping. Big shocker: Butters was good at neither. His attempts at flirting were treated as a joke by Kenny, just because they were so ridiculously out of character, and his hints vacillated between 'subtle as an axe' and 'too subtle to notice'. Never quite able to strike that perfect balance, Butters abandoned his endeavors at seduction altogether. It was much easier to just keep those emotions to himself. That way, he wouldn't risk rejection or further embarrassment.

His feelings for Kenny fluctuated as time passed - he was even able to date a couple other boys for a _very _brief period before deciding that it felt too much like cheating on Kenny to really be comfortable - but for the most part, they only grew bigger and more fully developed. Eventually, he surpassed the 'schoolboy crush' stage and segued into 'head over heels in love'. This shift was a little harder to deal with, though Butters supposed that was only normal. It was strange, feeling something that strong toward another person, and it was a little scary as well, but mostly it was wonderful. Butters was an admitted sucker for love. He loved the idea of it, the feel of it… heck, he just _loved _love! And he loved it even more when, after so many years of praying and waiting with bated breath, Kenny finally began to return his feelings. It had been a long and sometimes hard road, but Butters knew that he would overcome any struggle to be with Kenny.

He was sure that he would also remember, with an equal amount of clarity, the events that led to him getting his heart broken by Kenny McCormick for years to come.

Back in the present, Butters found himself standing in the same place that Cartman had left him: right by the window, washcloth still in hand despite the fact that cleaning the bedroom was the _least _of his worries right now. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get his limbs to move. They were leaden, paralyzed by fear, seizing up with dread. He wasn't really sure if he wanted to move. Maybe if he stood still enough, he could disappear into thin air. Poof. Just like that. He'd be transported back to the past, before Cartman had ever told him any of this, or maybe he'd end up in a different life and a different body, one that wasn't gangly and unattractive and one that Kenny actually liked. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard he was afraid his eyelids might tear and thought _please let this be a bad dream, oh Jesus, please don't let this be happenin'_, chanting it over and over in his mind like some sort of prayer. But if it was a prayer, then God obviously wasn't listening, because when Butters opened his eyes again, he was still an unattractive teenage boy standing in his dark bedroom with a washcloth in hand, and he was still facing the frightening reality that the last month of his life had been based on a fabricated relationship.

His stomach rolled and for a moment, he felt like he might throw up. One hand clutched at his stomach while the other one snared itself in his hair. He remembered something Mr. Mackey had told him about deep breathing, how it was supposed to calm his nerves down, and decided that now would be a good time to employ that strategy because his nerves were practically thrumming with anxiety. Anxiety. Mr. Mackey had offhandedly diagnosed him with that, once, and he was starting to believe that it held some weight. Some days, Butters didn't even feel like a human anymore. Some days, he wasn't Leopold Stotch, but rather a list of terms: _anxiety, self-esteem issues, unloved_. Today, he was feeling like that list of terms, especially the last one.

Butters flared his nostrils and sucked in deep breaths of air, attempting to calm down his body and mind at the same time. He reminded himself that hope was not yet lost. Cartman could have very well been lying; he was mad at the time, after all, and Cartman did mean and spiteful things often. Not as much as he used to, but still. He had been around Cartman long enough to know that when the other boy was angry, he took it out on those closest to him, which meant that Butters was usually the one to receive the brunt of his ire. Cartman was the type of person who would lie just to bring Butters down to his level. And besides, it just didn't make sense that Kenny would date him without at least liking him a little bit. Kenny always seemed to enjoy it when they were kissing, or when they were engaged in _any _sort of physical contact, really, so that was a good sign, and he appeared to be happy when they were simply together, so that was a good sign, too. Plus, why would Kenny be going out of his way to meet up with him every night if he didn't actually like Butters? It didn't make sense. _Nothing _really made sense anymore. The only way he could know anything for sure was to get Kenny's side of the story.

His body finally remembered how to move again and Butters walked over to his desk, searching around in the drawer for his cell phone. He used it so sparingly that his parents had forgotten that he even owned one, which meant that they hadn't thought to confiscate it after grounding him, thankfully. Cartman said this was because Butters was 'technologically retarded', but Butters simply preferred face-to-face interaction. He found it buried underneath his diary and pulled it out, scrolling down in the contacts until he found Kenny's name, and sent a text: _Meet me early? _He quickly shot off a _Please? _as an afterthought.

The reply came a few short minutes later. _ok. leaving now. is something wrong? _

Butters furrowed his brow in confusion. _No. Why?_

_no reason. but i know how much you hate texting._

That at least got a smile out of Butters. It always made him happy when Kenny remembered stupid, little things like that about him. The smile was quickly lost, however, as he remembered his current situation and sent his final reply. _I'll tell you about it later. See ya soon. _He closed the lid of the cell phone and shoved it back in his desk drawer.

Skipping forward half an hour later found Butters at Stark's Pond, sitting by himself on the bench as snow calmly fell from the sky. He was replaying moments from previous nights on this very same bench, trying to reconcile those images with the newfound information from Cartman. His eyes drifted shut, immersing himself in the memory of Kenny's soft, malleable lips pressing against his own, the flutter of his heartbeat underneath Butters' fingertips, the quiet and beautiful moans he made as Butters nuzzled against his neck. They were good memories, vivid ones. They made him happy. He replayed the same memories again, this time trying to imagine them from Kenny's point of view: kissing Butters but pretending that it was someone else, his heart palpitating not with joy, but with apprehension and maybe a bit of guilt, swallowing his disgust at Butters' touch and simply allowing the other boy to indulge himself. These didn't make Butters happy. He fisted his hands in the loose material of his jacket, feeling the hot sting of unshed tears pressing against the backs of his eyelids but refusing to let himself cry. Maybe that was why Kenny didn't love him; because he was such a crybaby. The thought only made Butters want to cry even more.

He'd been so immersed in his thoughts that he didn't even notice Kenny's presence until he felt a hand descending on his shoulder. Butters started and rapidly blinked away the wetness fogging up his vision before tilting his head upward to get a better look. Kenny's hood was down, the breeze ruffling his unkempt hair as he gave Butters that characteristic smile that _still _made his stomach fill with butterflies no matter how many times he saw it. Under normal circumstances, being the receiver of such a heartwarming smile would make Butters feel like the luckiest guy on Earth, but tonight was different. When he saw it now, all he could think was, _Is it fake? _"Hey," Kenny greeted, giving Butters' shoulder a light squeeze.

In lieu of a verbal reply, Butters stood up and took Kenny's face in his hands, bringing their lips together forcefully. The kiss had sloppy beginnings - Butters wasn't used to initiating openmouthed kissing, and their teeth clanked together - but he soon corrected himself, applying every technique he'd learned from Kenny over the past month. Although he knew he wasn't the best kisser out there, he liked to think he was at least getting better. Kenny was a good teacher. He ministered Kenny's mouth with a fervor that he'd never employed before, every stroke of his tongue fueled by desperation, every movement of his lips running on a gasoline of urgency. Maybe if he kissed Kenny hard enough, he could forget about what Cartman had told him. Maybe if he kissed Kenny good enough, he could make Kenny fall in love with him. But what if he couldn't? What if this was the last chance he'd ever get to kiss Kenny? Spurred on by that terrifying prospect, Butters threaded his trembling fingers in Kenny's hair, like that would somehow keep Kenny from ever leaving him. The terror abated slightly when Kenny wrapped his arms around Butters' waist and returned the kiss, but the overpowering urgency was still there. He kissed and kissed and kissed until he felt like he would be ripped in half, pulled apart by the longing and worry that clawed at him from the inside, and only ended the kiss when his lungs were physically unable to go on any longer.

Kenny's breath hit his face in quiet, ragged spurts. "Missed you, too," he said with a lazy grin.

"D-Do you like me?" Butters asked abruptly.

The post-kiss satisfaction that had varnished Kenny's dark blue eyes just seconds earlier faded away, to be replaced with confusion. "What?" He chuckled, as if the very idea was preposterous, but his laughter quickly trailed away when Butters remained stoic. "I think we've had this discussion before," he reminded Butters gently, rubbing consolatory circles and swirls into his lower back. "Of course I like you. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

Butters nodded slowly, his whole body deflating as the tension seeped out of it. "Okay," he conceded, looking up into Kenny's tender, kindly face and suddenly feeling very stupid. "Sorry for askin' that. It's not that I don't trust ya, it's just… sometimes, I'm just not sure. I do a whole lotta second-guessin'."

Kenny's expression further softened with pity. "What brought this on?"

"Eric came over today," he told him, averting his gaze meekly. "He said somethin' 'bout you not likin' me."

One hand disappeared from Butters' lower back to cup the side of his face. "Okay, well, that was definitely a lie. Don't listen to Cartman; he's an asshole." Butters nodded his agreement and leaned gratefully into Kenny's touch, pressing a thankful kiss to the warm, pinkish skin of his palm. He'd been dumb to ever doubt Kenny. Why had he listened to Eric, anyway? Eric had a good side, but it was buried underneath so much junk that it rarely showed itself. Kenny, on the other hand, was _all _good. If he could trust anyone, it was Kenny. He kissed Kenny's palm again, glancing up at him through half-mast eyes just in time to see the other boy's lips curve in a thoughtful frown.

Butters frowned as well. He curled his fingers between Kenny's and pulled the hand away from his face, clasping it in a way that he hoped was reassuring. "W-What's wrong?"

Kenny wetted his lips, and Butters tried not to be too distracted by that miniscule action. "…Did Cartman say anything else?" he asked at last.

The frown deepened. Kenny's inquiry, combined with the expression on his face, was worrisome. Butters looked away, instead opting to trace the translucent blue veins on Kenny's hand with his thumb. "Ah, he was spewin' some bull hockey 'bout how you didn't actually write that note askin' me out, an' you only agreed ta go out with me 'cause… 'cause you didn't wanna hurt my feelings. But I-I think he was just lyin' when he said all that." When he glanced up at Kenny again, the other teen was no longer frowning, but sporting an emotion that was even worse: panic. Butters felt his own veins freeze over. "He… he _was _lyin', wasn't he, Kenny?" he asked, the words coming out in a shaky whisper.

Kenny didn't seem to hear him. His countenance flickered with something that resembled shame, even crumpled for a moment, but it mostly remained smooth, a shield to hide the inner turmoil that Butters wasn't privy to. The real emotion was swirling in his eyes, the trembling pupils which looked right through Butters before disappearing behind the curtain of his eyelashes. "No," Kenny finally croaked. "He wasn't lying."

The revelation didn't hit Butters immediately. In the aftermath, he remained stock-still, all physical and mental capacities basically shut down. _He wasn't lying_. Those three words echoed blankly in his mind, bouncing off the walls, back and forth and up and down, but none of it was processing. _He wasn't lying_. After what felt like a lifetime, that statement registered in Butters' brain, equating _Cartman wasn't lying _with _Kenny was lying _and breaking that down even further into _Kenny doesn't like me_. What followed was mostly a series of knee-jerk reactions: he disentangled his fingers from Kenny's, he took a step back, he gripped his chest like he could feel his heart breaking deep in the cavity. The emotions hadn't quite caught up yet, but he could sense the hole expanding inside of him, carving out a new home for all the shock and pain and heartbreak when it _did _decide to present itself.

Through the tear-blurred edges of his vision, he saw Kenny's shoulders sag and his feet shuffle forward. "Butters, please," he implored, and Butters would've been taken aback by how raw those words sounded if his own emotions weren't so dulled. "Please, just… let me explain, okay? I can explain."

The second half of that statement awoke something in Butters. He felt the ropes tethering down his cognizance snap, and comprehension doused him like a bucket of icy water. A strangled gasp tore itself from his throat as Butters continued to stumble backward, away from Kenny and whatever _explanation_, whatever _justification_ he had for doing something like this. He didn't want to hear it anymore. He didn't want to be around Kenny anymore. But for every step Butters took backwards, Kenny took another step forward, hesitant yet determined as he thwarted Butters' escape attempt. An odd combination.

"Butters," Kenny repeated quietly, reaching for his limp hands. "Listen to me."

Cold skin brushed against cold skin as Kenny's fingers encircled Butters' wrist. Butters jerked it away immediately, cradling the hand in his other as if Kenny's touch had burnt him. Kenny said something else - probably another useless plea, or maybe a demand - but Butters couldn't hear it over the roar of blood rushing in his ears. One thought pervaded Butters' consciousness, and one thought only: _run_. He had to get out of there. Letting the fight-or-flight response take over, he ducked his head, turned away from Kenny and ran. He ran away from Kenny, from his explanations-slash-justifications, from the boy he loved and the human embodiment of Butters' stupidity. He ran away from Stark's Pond, through the dark streets of South Park, not stopping until his lungs were about to burst, expanding until they pressed up against the wall of his bones one moment and shriveling up into raisins the next. The sound of his labored breathing filled the air as Butters collapsed against a brick fence, his eyes now shut from exhaustion but still allowing tears to squeeze out. He stayed like that for several minutes, waiting for his breathing to even out and his sobs to diminish into quiet hiccups before opening his eyes, blinking several times until they focused on the building in front of him: a large, yellow schoolhouse. For some reason, Butters' feet had led him to South Park Elementary. The sight of it was oddly comforting, and for a heartbeat, Butters was even gripped with the ridiculous urge to smile at the fond childhood memories flooding back to him. But he was quickly brought back to reality by the sound of someone calling his name.

"Butters!" He heard it again, and this time recognized immediately that the voice belonged to Kenny. _He's lookin' for me_, Butters thought, and for a moment was almost flattered… until he remembered that helping people was just what Kenny _does_, and that it probably had no bearing on his feelings toward Butters whatsoever. The sound of his name rang out once more, this time even closer, and Butters knew that he'd have to continue moving unless he wanted to confront Kenny again (and he really, _really _didn't). Going home wasn't an option; he was still far too tired from all the running he'd just done. Since there were no other apparent alternatives, Butters forced his Jello-like legs to carry him over the fence and into the playground, where he found refuge in the confines of a plastic play structure.

He sat down in the corner of the colorful play structure, his legs curled up against his chest and his cheek resting against the frigid, synthetic walls. Tears continued to roll down his face, some even slipping down into the crevice of his slightly-parted mouth. Salt and Kenny. That's what the inside of his mouth tasted like. He had always liked the way Kenny tasted, so he didn't mind that part, but the addition of the tears made everything bitter. He wished he could take away all the tears and have it just be Kenny again - Kenny, Kenny, it was always about Kenny - but he didn't think that would ever be possible. Even if he _did _get the chance to taste Kenny again, he had a feeling that there would always be that lingering flavor of saltwater. A heartbreak residue. The thought made his heart twist painfully.

Was he mad at Kenny? A small part of him said yes; another part of him said that he was mad at Eric, too. But those parts paled in comparison to the dominant half of Butters, which was mad at himself. He was mad at himself for being so stupid, for never seeing the signs. Maybe he should've paid more attention to Kenny's behavior. Maybe, if he looked hard enough, he could've found some thinly-veiled message in all the times Kenny was the first one to pull away, or when he stopped before they could go too far. Maybe he could've prevented all of this if he'd just paid attention for once. But Butters was stupid, had always been stupid, and love had made him even more stupid, so if there _were _signs, he'd never noticed them. He was just an ignorant fool with a broken heart, and he mostly had himself to blame for that.

Another sob threatened to bubble out of his throat, so Butters buried his face in his arms, keeping the sound of his weakness inside until his whole body convulsed with the effort. He knew it was better to just let himself cry. Mr. Mackey had told him so, and he knew this from personal experience, as well. But he couldn't stand it anymore. He already felt humiliated enough as it is for having consistently poured out his heart to someone who didn't even like him; crying only made him feel more debased. Once he'd reined in his sobs, he lifted his head up again and noticed a drawing on the wall beside him. He squinted through the thin film of tears covering his corneas and leaned in closer until he could see it better. It was a simple pencil sketch of him, Kenny, Cartman, Stan and Kyle, in that order. They were composed of basic geometric shapes, all circles and squares and wide, triangular smiles. The violently-scribbled 'X' over Kyle was certainly Cartman's doing, but Butters recognized the rest of it as his artwork. He had drawn it on a rare warm day in early June, at the tail-end of 5th grade. They had all been crowded inside the play structure, their t-shirts flapping in the summer breeze, engaged in a rare moment of seriousness. Someone (probably Stan or Kyle) had posed the question: _"What do you think middle school will be like?" _They spent the rest of recess trying to answer that question, and at the end, they all silently decided they'd miss elementary school. Butters could see it on their faces, plain as day. So he had grabbed a nubby pencil and drew their little gang on the wall, explaining to them that this way, there'd always be a permanent piece of them left in the Elementary School, no matter where they went next. For once, they'd all agreed with Butters that it was a good idea. He thinks that he and Kenny might have even hugged. It was a good day. Butters wished he could go back to that day, when everything was still relatively simple between all of them. If he could go back to that moment, freeze it, and change things, would he? Would he warn Cartman of all the struggles that awaited him with Wendy? Would he stop himself from hugging Kenny? In the long run, would it even _matter_? Something told him that it wouldn't.

He let his fingertip drift over the bumpy plastic, tracing a heart around the doodle of him and Kenny. His stomach twisted into knots. Kenny was the sun of his solar system; Butters probably wasn't even a star in Kenny's night sky. With the same fingertip, he drew a line between them.

Somewhere in the distance, Kenny called his name again.

Butters didn't answer.


	15. It's Complicated

**A/N: **Holy shit, you guys. Over 100 reviews? All I can say is: thank you, so very very much. It's been a hell of a ride, but your comments have made it worthwhile, and they always brighten my day. Only a few more chapters left. I'm... kind of happy, but a little sad, too.

About this chapter: A wild CREEK and STYLE have been spotted! Sort of.

Ugh, exams suck.

**Disclaimer: **Don't own.

**Chapter 14**

"Did you hear that Butters Stotch broke up with Kenny McCormick?"

Honors English, AP Psychology, Economy. Wendy took out the textbooks for each of these classes and proceeded to shove them into her book bag, then slammed her locker harder than was strictly necessary. With a sigh of mild annoyance, she turned toward the speaker: a short girl, probably a freshman, with unruly red hair and a malicious glint in her bespectacled eyes. Wendy adjusted the strap of her tote and tried to show the girl that she had no interest in the subject without explicitly saying so. "Oh, really? Where did you hear _that _from?" she wondered sarcastically. The day wasn't even halfway over yet and she'd already heard the same story with differing amounts of embellishment at least 10 times. South Park High wasn't any more obsessed with rumors than every other high school in America. Most breakups went by with little to no fuss, seeing as breaking up was a common occurrence in teenage relationships. But this one was definitely _un_common, mostly because of the two people involved. With Kenny McCormick's reputation as something of a local stud, and Butters being the only openly gay teen in South Park, they had become a dream couple in the eyes of squealing teen girls all over the school. Or they used to be, at least. Wendy didn't really care either way. She was sympathetic, sure; she'd known both Kenny and Butters for a long time, and knew that they were good people who deserved happiness. But unlike seemingly every other girl her age, she _didn't _like sticking her nose into other people's relationships. It was just rude.

The freshman girl, however, didn't appear to feel the same way. "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend knows this guy who lives next to Kenny and saw him writing emo poetry about Butters last night," she gushed, taking a deep breath once she was done. "I guess it's pretty intense."

Wendy rolled her eyes. Emo poetry? That definitely did not sound like the Kenny McCormick _she _knew. The only poetry she had seen Kenny write was disgustingly perverse haikus about penises and vaginas, and she didn't exactly classify that as intense, emotional stuff. "I'm sure it was," Wendy muttered.

Her conversational partner must've been disappointed in Wendy's lack of interest, because she disappeared without another word. _Good riddance_, Wendy couldn't help but think. She wasn't in a very good mood that day - she hadn't been in a good mood since the day before this whole fiasco with Cartman and Token imploded, really - but today was especially bad, for some reason. If Cartman were here, he'd probably make some offensive, sexist comment about PMSing. Cartman. Wendy shook her head. Thinking about Cartman would _not _lift her spirits. With another sigh, she decided to just get to her next class. (Not that AP Psych was a particularly cheerful subject, but it was preferable to being hounded about stupid rumors)

She smoothed her slightly-rumpled shirt and headed away from her locker, skirting around the small crowd of girls encircling Butters' own, conveniently located just three down from hers by virtue of alphabetical order. The boy looked harried by all the attention he was getting, which didn't really surprise Wendy. It was a well-known fact that every girl secretly (or not-so-secretly, in this case) wanted a gay best friend. And unfortunately for Butters, he fit the role perfectly: he was friendly, sweet, easy to talk to, dressed nicer than 90% of the school's male population, and was generally too adorable for his own good. Wendy flashed him a sympathetic smile as she walked on by, which Butters returned with a feeble wave of acknowledgment.

The next thing she knew, she was being pulled inside the janitor's closet.

Wendy extracted her foot from the mop bucket it had somehow fallen into, shaking the dirty water from it with a scoff of disgust. "What the fu-" she blurted, but the curse word died on her lips once she locked eyes with a pair of dark, chocolate brown irises just inches from her own. They shone with something close to humor before disappearing behind the wall of his eyelids, the rest of his body shuddering slightly as a deep breath rattled through it. Wendy brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and shifted uncomfortably. "Eric…"

His eyes snapped open at the sound of his name, like he'd forgotten she were there. Both hands reached up to pull off his signature bright blue hat, tugging and yanking clumsily until it popped free, leaving an uncovered head of tousled brown hair in its wake. One singular clump stood straight up amongst the plains of poker-straight strands. Wendy couldn't help but think it was cute. For most people, 'cute' and 'Eric Cartman' were never in the same sentence unless there was a 'not' somewhere in between, but that's because they'd never seen him like she had. They had never seen him first thing in the morning, with his eyes all droopy and his shirt on backwards and Mr. Kitty licking his face because he was too tired and complacent to be bitchy. They had never seen him on Valentine's Day, when he tried _so hard _to be romantic and had on enough cologne to fill the gas chambers of a small concentration camp and the Altoid-imbued breath rolled out of his grinning teeth in waves. They had never seen that side of Eric Cartman in the past and Wendy suspected that they never would in the future, either. But that was okay. _She _had seen it, on multiple occasions and in multiple places, and she counted herself lucky almost every day for being able to say that she knew the real Cartman. That rebellious clump of hair held her attention for a few more seconds before she took in the rest of him: the slope of his wide shoulders, the blotchy redness of his cheeks, and that damned neon blue hat being twisted around his fingers, inside out and outside in like a game of cat's cradle. There was a word for his current demeanor, Wendy thought. Apologetic. Yes, that was it: Eric was apologetic. Her eyes casually scanned the dank interior of the closet. "Is this supposed to be some sort of extended metaphor for telling me you're gay?" she remarked, even though that's not what she had planned to say. Wit was always safer than honesty.

The blotches on his cheeks darkened. "Shut up, ho," he snapped. "I didn't bring you in here to tell you I'm a goddamn rainbow child - which I'm _not_, okay, why does everyone _THINK _that? Jesus Christ!"

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Oh, shush. I was kidding. If anyone can attest to your heterosexuality, it's me." She let that sink in for a moment. "So… why _did _you bring me in here?"

His snappiness ebbed away, returning to his former contrite disposition. "I need to… I want to…," he began, almost stammered, before covering his mouth with both hands and the blue fabric stretched between them. No words came forth to fill the rest of Cartman's broken sentence. Instead, the only sound that bubbled from his lips was one of muffled gagging, mingling with the mute buzz of the overhead fluorescent light to create a quiet but sickening symphony.

Now a little concerned, Wendy reached forward to awkwardly pet Cartman's arm in a manner she hoped was soothing. "Hey," she said, "Do you need to go to the nurse's office, sweetie?" Wendy froze. She hadn't meant to sound _that _soothing. Annoyance and embarrassment boiled inside of her, but she shrugged it off and hoped to God that Cartman hadn't noticed it.

Her hopes were immediately dashed when the hat fell away from Cartman's face, revealing two rows of pearly whites curved upward in a wide, knowing grin. "If I make more barfing noises, will you call me 'sweetie' again?" he asked, employing that sugarcoated voice he saved for the moments when he really wanted something.

Wendy scoffed. "Not a chance." Belatedly, she removed her hand from its place on his arm. "I _will _take you to the office if you're sick, though."

"I'm not sick," he replied with a vigorous shake of his head. The rebellious clump of hair fell down over his left eye, but a quick puffing breath from the corner of his mouth whisked it away. "I… I'm suh… GODDAMMIT, WHY CAN'T I JUST SAY IT?" He continued to sputter outrageously until a spark of inspiration lit up his features and he raised one middle and forefinger in the air.

Wendy watched his lips purse into a thin line, her vision momentarily going cross-eyed as he silently thrust both fingers at her. "What is this, a game of charades?" she wondered. The inquiry had only been half-serious, a humorous jab at Cartman's odd behavior, but he responded to it with an exuberant nod. He always did this to her - reeling her in, exerting that strange Cartman magnetism of his to make her do the most ridiculous things… like playing charades in the janitor's closet. Christ. "Okay. Um… 2 words?" Another nod, and then he retracted the two protruding fingers and jabbed them at his chest. "You… I?" she guessed, correcting herself when he pointed at one flickering, augmented eyeball. "I am…?"

The motions ceased altogether, Cartman's hands flopping uselessly back to his sides and a distant look creeping like a shadow across his face, bringing an anticipatory silence with it. Wendy waited. With Cartman, you were always waiting; for his next extravagant hate crime, for the putrefying wounds of his corruption and insecurity to finally eat him alive from the inside, for something, for _anything_. He was almost predictable in his sheer unpredictability. So Wendy waited for the inevitable caprice, knowing that any moment now, he would once again do something completely uncalled for and (probably) highly offensive. Any moment now. But he didn't. For once, Cartman had no more tricks up his sleeve. Wendy reached for the door handle.

"No, wait!" he cried, clamping a too-large hand over Wendy's smaller, delicate one. "I'm sorry! I'm SORRY! I said it, okay! I _apol-ah-gize_!" Calluses brushed against smooth skin as Cartman's hand slid away, regressing to rake all 5 fingers through his hair. The entirety of his body seemed to be buzzing with agitation. It powered him, running from his mildly disgusted face down to his feet, which were shuffling around the cramped closet in a nervous dance. "I'm sorry I ruined your perfect relationship, I'm sorry that I'm such an asshole, I'm sorry that you hate me! I don't know what organ or hormone or other weird shit people have in their body that makes them not do stupid things, but whatever it is, I don't have it! Don't ask me why; I just _don't_!" The toe of his tennis shoe collided with a yellow 'CAUTION: WET FLOOR' sign, toppling it to the ground. "I know what I did was probably kind of wrong, but it made, like, perfect sense at the time, you know? If I could go back in time, I'd totally change it - well, first, I'd go back to the '40s and make sure that all the Jews were killed, but _after _that, I'd stop myself from making Token break up with you." Wendy started to roll her eyes at the obligatory anti-Semitic comment, but the gesture halted immediately when Cartman turned to face her without a hint of humor or irony in his expression, just pure honesty and desire. "Because I want to be with you again more than anything, but only if _you_ want to be with me. I don't want you to go out with me just because Token's gone and I'm the only option left or something lame like that. And even if you don't wanna be with me, I'd _still_ take back what I did because I hate it when you're pissed off at me. I mean, yeah, we've been ripping on each other all the time since we were kids but I actually kind of liked that because at least I could pretend you were flirting with me and _oh my God this is like Tourettes all over again, fuuuuuuck_."

"Breathe, Eric," Wendy admonished gently, watching with a touch of concern as her ex-boyfriend paced back and forth, his nostrils flared and his jaw visibly clenched. At her words, the pacing thankfully stopped. Good. She had some things that she wanted to get off her chest, too, and she needed him to be calm when she said them. "Listen. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pissed off at you, because I am. A lot. What you did was… well, it was really, really dumb, to be honest. And I have every right to hate you."

Cartman scowled. "God, Wendy, you really know how to make a guy feel really fuckin' _awesome_. Great job. Just wonderful, baby."

"I wasn't done," Wendy said brusquely. "I have every right to hate you… but that's the thing: I _don't_. I _don't _hate you." She looked away, staring intently at a mysterious stain on the floor like it was the most interesting thing in the world, while her hands fisted in the hem of her shirt. "It's… the opposite, actually. I mean, yes, you can be a complete and total asshole sometimes, but I'm not blameless, either. There were moments when I… God, when I was such a _bitch_, and I'm sorry for that. Like all those times I told you to move on. I was being a bitch, but more than that, I was being a hypocrite. You probably know this already, but I never moved on. I just acted like I did to convince everyone else that I didn't like you anymore, and I guess I even convinced myself a little bit, but… not really. I knew how I felt about you and yet I ignored it for 4 years. So, basically, I'm a coward and if you still like me after I admitted all of this… well, congratulations. You're more of a stubborn asshole than I thought." A tiny smile enlivened her mouth, but it was forced.

Cartman stared at her for a long moment, his eyes boring into hers and yet seeming to look straight past them, as if he could read all the thoughts that lay just beyond. The urge to run and close herself off from him suddenly gripped Wendy, but she pushed it aside. She hated being this vulnerable, hated it to a point where it was almost irrational, yet there was also the knowledge that if she _did _run, she would only make things worse. So she steeled herself against his scrutiny and remained rooted to the spot. "…Do you _want _me to be a stubborn asshole?" Cartman asked after what felt like an eternity, his voice unusually quiet.

The tiny smile became a full-on grin. "I can't believe I'm saying this… but yes. Jesus Christ. I want you to be a stubborn asshole, Cartman."

Cartman's face lit up with a grin of its own. "I'm _so _going to be the biggest stubborn asshole the world has ever seen," he boasted, puffing out his chest slightly and grinning even wider when Wendy chuckled. "Uh… so. What now?"

Wendy arched an eyebrow, curious. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you know what I mean. Don't make me spell it out, hippie." When Wendy shook her head, because no, she did _not _know what Cartman meant, the boy flushed with evident embarrassment. "Goddammit, you _are _going to make me spell it out, huh? Um… okay. Doesthismeanwe'regoingoutagain?"

The words came out in one long, multi-syllabic breath, crammed together so close that Wendy had to mentally cut and divide them. Once she had deciphered its meaning, Wendy could only say one thing: "…Oh." She hadn't expected Cartman to be so forward, but then again, when was Cartman ever _not _forward? He was by far the bluntest person she had ever met. It just wouldn't be like him to skirt around an issue, especially one that directly affected his own happiness. Wendy paused to mull over the question, turning over their current situation in her head, before finally articulating a response. "I hate to do this to you, I really do, but… do you think we could wait?" she asked, biting her lower lip hesitantly. "I mean - not a long time. Maybe a couple weeks, at the most. It's just… Token and I _just _broke up, you know? Well, obviously you do, but. Whatever. Anyways, I want to be with you, Eric. I really do. But I don't want to make you look or feel like a rebound, because you're so much more to me than that, and when we get together again, I kind of want it to be perfect." The admission hung thickly in the air, and Wendy winced. "That sounded a lot less corny in my head."

"That _was _pretty corny," Cartman agreed, and he even had the gall to smirk at her, "But I agree."

Wendy blinked. "Really? You… you really don't mind waiting?"

"Wow, way to have faith in me, Wendy." He rolled his eyes, the smirk still firmly in place, but somewhat softer. "You know what your problem is? I don't think you give me enough credit. Nope. I can be a wicked, super awesome, patient guy, provided there's a handsome reward involved." His feet scuffed against the floor. "And… yeah, you're definitely worth waiting for."

In that moment, Wendy felt all of her previous frustrations with Cartman ebb away, the ensuing tide breaking down the walls of all the love for him she'd tried to hold back over the years. Wordlessly, she closed the space between them by throwing her arms around his neck. It took a few seconds, but eventually, Cartman reciprocated and hesitantly wrapped his own arms around her waist, anchoring her close with a minimal amount of pressure. The full magnitude of the situation suddenly hit her: she was hugging Cartman. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd done that. And Cartman, the self-avowed hater of nonromantic physical contact, was hugging her back. Maybe, just _maybe_, things would work out between them this time.

"I forgot to mention," Cartman said, his warm breath tickling her ear. "There's a catch."

Wendy pulled back to fix him with a mortified stare. "Do I really want to know?" she wondered aloud.

"Hell yeah, you do," Cartman answered confidently. "Okay, here it is: I'll wait until you're ready to go out with me again. That's fahn. I got some other shit I need to take care of, anyway. BUT… you have to kiss me again." His eyes slanted away. "You look really pretty today… for a raging hippie whore, I mean. So. That's why I wanna kiss you."

That day, Wendy wasn't wearing any makeup. She had woken up 20 minutes late, had a yogurt for breakfast, brushed her teeth, quickly ran a brush through her hair, and thrown on a shirt and sweatpants that didn't quite match, but she'd been in too much of a hurry to care. For all intents and purposes, she was underdressed, barely presentable by high school standards. And Cartman thought it was pretty. Not only did he not mind it; he _liked _it. A sudden surge of affection washed over her, and it didn't even matter that Cartman was as much of an asshole as he'd always been, or that she was still kind of pissed off at him, because moments like this reminded her of why she'd fallen in love with him in the first place. She placed one hand against the junction of his head and neck and pulled him down, bringing their lips together in a chaste kiss. There was no tongue. Wendy didn't care. Cartman had nice lips, she thought. Even Cartman's biggest detractors had to give him that. They were soft, full, and gentle. A perfect antonym to Cartman's personality. Maybe that was why Wendy liked them so much.

Her hand still resting against Cartman's neck, she broke off the kiss, watching as Cartman sucked on his lower lip. "Mmmm, the taste of herpes. Delicious," he remarked, smiling dreamily. "…Thanks."

She moved her hand to pat him on the cheek. "You're welcome," she replied, smiling.

They left the janitor's closet after that, which earned them a few looks of interest from fellow classmates, and walked to their next class together with their hands just barely brushing, which also drew some attention. Wendy didn't pay them any attention. People could talk all they wanted. The only opinion she really cared about was Cartman's, and she didn't even care about _that _so much.

"So," she began conversationally as they came to a halt by a drinking fountain, "What have you been up to lately? Anything particularly stupid?"

Cartman pushed down on the fountain's metallic button and lapped at the resultant stream of water. "Oh, har har," he mock-laughed once he was done, straightening up again and wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve. "I've been brainstorming on how to win back my _other _girlfriend."

"Your _other _girlfriend?" Wendy echoed. "Hm. Not sure how I feel about that. Who is she?"

He grinned. "Butters."

Wendy grinned at that, too, but it quickly morphed into a frown. "Uh oh. What do you mean, 'win him back'? You didn't do anything to piss him off, did you?" she asked, the frown deepening when Cartman looked away guiltily. "He's your best friend, Cartman. Don't let that go to waste. Honestly, you're lucky that he's stuck by you for so long."

"Right, 'cause I totally didn't already know that," he snapped, momentarily puffing up in defense, but quickly deflated. "Look. I got this. I'm going to fix it. I'll have his sweet faggy ass crawling back to me in no time."

His voice sounded as undaunted and self-assured as ever, but Wendy knew that he didn't really feel it. There was a hint of worry to his words. Just barely noticeable, but still there nonetheless. This ordeal with Butters - whatever it was - had obviously been bugging him more than he let on. In actuality, she didn't know if Cartman would be able to patch up whatever he'd done wrong to Butters, but she _did _know that he needed encouragement, not brutal honesty."Yep. You'll fix it," she told him. "You always do."

A genuine smile lit up his face. "You are _so_ kewwwwwwl, Wendy," he gushed, once again using that faux sugar-sweet tone of his, the one that was either incredibly annoying or incredibly endearing, depending on Wendy's mood at the time. Today, she was leaning more toward 'incredibly endearing'.

"Kiss-ass," she quipped, shoving him jokingly. "Get to class."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, chuckling softly to himself as he began to walk away. A few paces later, he paused, tossing a guarded glance over his shoulder. "So, um… we're coo' now, right?"

_If that's what you'd call it_, Wendy thought. Their relationship was tentative at best, unstable at worst. It had always kind of been like that, honestly, but now it was even more so. She still had her issues with Cartman, and she was sure that he still harbored some resentment toward her, but she also hoped that they could work past that in time. No; she _knew _they could. "Yeah," she decided at last, smiling. "We're cool now."

* * *

To say that the next few weeks were awkward for Kenny would be an understatement.

Awkwardness hadn't been the dominant feeling at first, of course. At first, the only thing he could feel was guilt and an overwhelming sense of _oh my God, I've just seriously fucked everything up_. And in his mind, he had. There was no way of denying it after seeing Butters' face, that face which used to have an almost permanent glow of happiness upon it, but had been filled with such shock, such pain, and even worse - such _betrayal_ - on that night that it broke Kenny's heart just thinking about it. And oh, did he think about it, to an extent that it was almost obsessive. Every time he closed his eyes, the image of Butters' grief-stricken expression was burnt onto the backs of his lids. It filled his sleep, which oscillated jarringly between nightmares and fitful periods of half-consciousness. Even when he was awake, he couldn't escape it. The most mundane activities, the most unseemly household objects, hell, even certain _words _triggered the memory of Butters. Thankfully, those memories didn't all revolve around Butters' heartbreak. Some of them were even happy. Butters' smile, the special one he saved just for Kenny. That was a common theme. There were also memories about Butters' laugh (soft and airy and jubilant), his voice (not as deep as Kenny's, and with an uptick to it that made everything sound new and intriguing), his hugs (warm and comforting and able to lift the heaviest of hearts)… they were good memories, happy ones, ones that would've made Kenny happy under normal circumstances. But now, they only filled him with a hollow ache, serving as a reminder of what he'd lost and just how badly he'd lost it. Butters was everywhere and nowhere, all at once. He was close enough to touch and yet Kenny felt like he could run the circumference of the Earth 10 times over and _still _be unable to reach him. It was depressing. It was disheartening. But mostly it was frustrating.

Kenny had never been very good at ignoring his thoughts. Contrary to what his report cards would suggest, he was a thinker. From a young age, he'd been a quiet kid, occasionally offering sexual information or cracking a dirty joke, but he was primarily a silent observer. He watched the abnormal and often downright freaky events that occurred in South Park with a keen wordlessness, cataloguing those happenings with almost superhuman accuracy and saving them for later. It wasn't in his nature to forget. At any single moment, when he wasn't talking (which was about 75% of the time), any number of past occurrences or thoughts could be floating through his mind, some passing by in the blink of an eye and some lingering for days on end. These thoughts were lingerers. More than that, actually; they were repeaters. They replayed over and over and over again in his head like a broken record. The vinyl needle of his brain was stuck in a Butters-induced scratch, and it was really starting to piss him off.

The only way to end it, he was sure, was to smooth things over with Butters.

He would tell Butters that it was all a misunderstanding, that yes, he _had _only agreed to go out with him at first out of pity and a simple desire to help, but things were different now. Somewhere along the way, he'd developed very real and very strong feelings for Butters. He wanted to be with him not because he felt like it was something he should do, but because it was something he _wanted _to do, and because he didn't think he'd ever wanted something so badly in his entire life. Once that was cleared up, he and Butters could go back to being a happy couple with excessive amounts of PDA and dry-humping and then all would be right with the universe. Their reunion might even herald the end of world hunger! In Kenny's mind, it would be a glorious one. He'd even practiced what he'd say to Butters, had written it down a couple times to commit it to memory. His first few attempts sounded gayer than the gay musical lovechild of Elton John and Big Gay Al, but by the time he'd polished it up, he finally had a speech that was both suave and contrite enough to make Butters swoon back into his loving embrace. Or at least, he _hoped _it would be received that way.

The only problem now, it would seem, was actually _seeing _Butters again.

Every time he went over to Butters' house, his parents either slammed the door in his face or, when they were feeling particularly generous, pause to tell him that Butters wasn't home. This was only a minor obstacle, and one that Kenny had foreseen. No big deal. His backup plans involved him throwing chewed-up tennis balls at Butters' bedroom window (rocks might break the glass and get Butters grounded), writing messy SOS's in the snow, and in a moment of desperation, attempting to climb up the Stotches' drainpipe and hang there until Butters rolled up the blinds and opened his window or he lost grip and died. When neither happened, Kenny gave up for the time being. It was becoming quickly apparent that Butters was avoiding him, and since there was really no legal way for Kenny to break into Butters' house and instigate a much-needed Talk, he'd have to postpone it until they crossed paths again. For the first time in his life, Kenny was actually happy when Christmas break ended, because there was no way Butters could avoid him at school.

Except for the fact that he totally _could_.

And did.

Every. Fucking. Day.

In Kenny's defense, there weren't very many chances for them to run into each other naturally. Butters was a straight-A student, and Kenny was almost painfully average, which meant that they didn't have many classes together outside their electives. Before they broke up (was it a breakup? Kenny knew they were at least 'on hiatus', but 'broken up' sounded a little too definite), they had mostly relied on passing time and lunch to see each other during school hours. A designated meeting spot would be picked - Butters' locker, Kenny's locker, outside this or that classroom - and they would talk for a few minutes before Butters went off to the wonderful world of academia and Kenny returned to the bowels of mediocrity. That was how things used to work. But Butters was never at his locker, never even _passed _by Kenny's own one, and Kenny only ever saw Butters once in the hallway during the first few days of school following Christmas break. He had pushed through the throngs of students crowding the hallway and caught up to Butters, who turned to him somewhat warily and waited for Kenny to say something. Kenny had opened his mouth, fully prepared to deliver his apologetic 'please take me back' speech in the kind of teen-romance way that would make the late and great John Hughes piss himself with envy, but his mind went instantly blank upon finding himself under Butters' wide-eyed scrutiny and he'd turned tail and fled before he could say even one word to his (ex?) boyfriend. With that embarrassing disaster under his belt, Kenny didn't dare attempt to instigate conversation with Butters for a whole week.

But today was different. Today, he was going to fix things with Butters, goddammit.

He pressed his forehead against the cold metal of his locker, staring down blankly at the tan-and-black speckled tiles a few feet below. The hood of his coat was cinched to the point where only his eyes and nose were visible, but even through the thick orange material, he could hear every single word of Kyle's rhetoric.

"…And then Butters walked in on Kenny sleeping with someone else, and I guess he broke up with him. So yes, Stan, that _is_ why they both look like kicked puppies."

Kenny's head snapped up immediately. "What? I didn't fucking sleep with _anybody_!" he retorted, the words coming out in an angry explosion of muffled sounds. Two gazes, one blue and one emerald, flicked over to Kenny as if noticing him for the first time. Typical. Even his best friends had a tendency to treat Kenny like a prop. He sometimes wondered, only half-jokingly, if his superhero name should've been The Invisible Man instead of Mysterion.

Kyle's expression remained unreadable, but Stan's gradually softened into pity. "Hey, Ken," he began, using that characteristic 'voice of reason' tone as his hand descended lightly on Kenny's shoulder, "It's okay. We understand. You've always been a little more… um… free-spirited than the rest of us. Butters probably should've been expecting something like that to happen."

Kenny's jaw dropped, but of course no one could see that under the cover of his hood. Apparently, not only did his best friends frequently ignore his presence, they had also been operating under the assumption that he was a cheating manwhore. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. With a clinking of teeth, his jaw snapped shut, and he chose to express the self-defensive rage coursing through him with narrowed eyes. "Free-spirited, my ass," he grumbled, sloughing off Stan's hand before adding a little louder, "Where the hell did you hear that I cheated on Butters, anyway?"

He glared at Stan, who frowned and glanced at Kyle, who lifted and dropped one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug. "Oh, you know," he said, flopping his hand in a way that made Kenny seriously doubt his heterosexuality, "The rumor mill."

For the first time the entire conversation, Cartman spoke up. "Kahl would also like to add that he got his first period today, and his breasts are finally starting to develop." Kenny felt the tiniest spark of hostility - Cartman _was_ responsible for his and Butters' current situation, after all - but he couldn't find it in his heart to really be angry. He guessed that the truth would've had to have come out sooner or later. The larger boy crossed both arms over his chest and leaned against the wall of lockers, staring off somewhere in the middle-distance. "Our favorite little Jewrat has finally gone through puberty. Isn't that _great_, you gahs? Maybe there's still hope for Justin Bieber after all."

Kenny and Stan exchanged prematurely exasperated glances. _3, 2, 1… _Kyle whirled around to face Cartman, teeth already bared in a primal display of rage. "Fuck you, fatass!" he yelled. "I went through puberty _years _ago! Didn't I, Stan?"

Stan's face reddened. "How would _I _know? I don't pay attention to that kind of stuff." He laughed a little too loudly and scratched the back of his head, twisting his fingers around clumps of smooth black hair. "Especially not about you, dude."

_Ouch_. Even before Kyle's face crumpled with hurt and mild embarrassment, Kenny knew that the comment would wound him. He wasn't sure what was going on between Stan and Kyle - he blamed his month-long vacation to 'Butters World' for this ignorance - but whatever it was, Kyle was obviously being affected by it. The redhead frowned to himself, gave a little shake of his head, and then turned back to Cartman with a snarl once again upon his lips. Kenny silently reprimanded Stan for his tactlessness and tuned out the ensuing argument between Kyle and Cartman, a practice which he'd perfected after many years of friendship with South Park's two biggest hotheads. He retreated into his own thoughts as the sounds of bickering swirled around him like radio static.

Who had told Stan and Kyle that he'd been sleeping around on Butters? Kenny knew he would probably never be able to answer that. High school was oftentimes like a game of Telephone on steroids, and rumors rarely had a traceable source. They mostly just mutated over time. Normally, Kenny wouldn't mind being the subject of a bullshit scandal. He didn't give a damn about his reputation either way. However, he resented the idea that he'd ever do something so terrible to someone like Butters. Sure, he had invariably hurt Butters by agreeing to date him without having any romantic interest in him at the beginning, but he'd done it because he wanted Butters to feel _better _about himself. He'd never do anything to hurt Butters on purpose.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Kyle gradually scooting closer to Stan, and Stan resultantly shuffling farther away from Kyle. Kenny quirked an eyebrow at their awkward exchange but otherwise said nothing, as per usual. They obviously had their own little drama going on, one that Kenny would like to stay as far removed from as possible. He had his own problems to deal with. Namely Butters. He sighed and craned his neck, scanning the hallway for any signs of said boy.

"UGH!" Kenny's attention abruptly returned to his friends at the exasperated outburst. Kyle was now standing a few feet to the right of both Cartman and Stan, ushanka slightly askew and both pale hands clenched firmly at his sides. He proceeded to throw them in the air, declare "God, Stan, you're such a _dick_!", and then stomp - yes, _stomp _- away from them.

Cartman hummed to himself once the Jew was out of earshot. "Well, looks like I've filled my daily quota of making Kahl a butthurt loser, and it's not even 3rd hour yet," he observed cheerfully. "Bye, fags." And with that, Cartman melted into the crowd of passing students, leaving Stan and Kenny to their own devices.

"So… what was _that _about?" Kenny wondered, genuinely curious now.

Stan sighed. "I'm not really sure. Kyle's been acting super pissy lately, for some reason."

"More pissy than usual, you mean?"

The dark-haired teen grinned fondly. "Yeah. More than usual," he agreed, then frowned. "I'm normally not the reason why he's so pissy, though. It's… kind of weird. I don't like it."

Kenny gave a sympathetic nod and patted his friend's jutting elbow, all thoughts of Butters momentarily forgotten. It looked like he was going to be sucked into Stan and Kyle's soap opera whether he wanted to or not. "Hm, right, that _is_ pretty weird. You guys have always been such good friends, I'm always surprised when you…" A thought occurred to Kenny and he trailed off, his brow wrinkling in thought. "Hey, are you and Kyle still blowing each other?"

Stan sputtered, probably at Kenny's bluntness. Not that Kenny cared, and even if he did, he wouldn't change; Stan was such a prude, he _needed _Kenny's frank way of dealing with all things sexual to balance it out. "Uh, yeah." He coughed. "_Bro _jobs, not blowjobs." A forced chuckle. "We're not gay, dude."

Kenny could've told Stan any number of things in that moment: that he was being a dumbass, that giving your best friend blowjobs on a regular basis was pretty much the gayest thing _ever_, that Kyle's frustration was totally valid. But he knew that Stan was sensitive, and therefore Kenny needed to handle this subject with kid gloves. "Okay. I'm the third party here, so I don't know everything that's going on, but from where I'm standing… it kinda looks like you're using him, Stan. I mean, yeah, for _you_, this isn't a big deal. You want sex, no strings attached. Whatever. I get it. But… Kyle's kind of a commitment guy, you know? He probably wants a more solid, stable relationship, and you and I both know how much he _hates _being used."

Stan nodded slowly as he mulled over Kenny's words, then shot him a perplexed look. "But wait… wasn't that basically what you were doing with Butters?"

Kenny stiffened, a reaction which was quickly becoming routine whenever the topic of Butters was brought up. "What do you mean?"

Stan continued to watch him for a moment before lowering his gaze meekly. "Never mind," he mumbled. "Forget I said anything."

"Hell no, you're not getting off that easy. What did you say?"

Stan sighed, shifting self-consciously, and Kenny wondered for a brief moment if he really _did _want to hear what his friend had to say. "Well…," he hedged, "You didn't _like_-like Butters when you went out with him, but you probably still had sex with him, right?" Another forced chuckle. "Let's face it, dude: you're not very good at keeping it in your pants."

For a moment, all Kenny could do was stare at Stan and wait for the punchline, the 'nah, just kidding'. When none came, he simply gritted his teeth and inhaled a shaky breath to keep himself from doing or saying something he would later come to regret. Partially, he was upset at the not-so shocking revelation that one of his closest and oldest friends didn't understand him in the least, but that wasn't what made him mad. No; what made him mad were the grossly off-base assumptions about his relationship with Butters. Sure, he liked sex, but he liked Butters even more, and his respect for him trumped any carnal desires he might have. Kenny was an admitted pervert, but he had a strong sense of chivalry as well. And contrary to popular belief, it _was _possible for him to maintain a stable, healthy relationship without the element of sexual gratification. Was that really so hard for people to understand? Apparently. It was moments like this that made him feel like Butters was the only person who understood him, who even _tried _to understand… and now, Butters was treating him like a leper. God, he missed him so much. "No, Stan," Kenny replied at length, "We _didn't _have sex, because _I_ don't treat my friends like cheap hookers."

He left without waiting to hear Stan's response.

Indignation hung thickly over his mind, clouding all rational thought to the point where he didn't even realize what class he was in until he slid into his usual seat at the back of the room and glanced at the whiteboard: Government with Mr. Garrison. Definitely not his favorite class, but it was made slightly more tolerable by the fact that he shared it with Butters. Kenny made a silent vow to get Butters to talk to him by the end of the hour.

He took out his frayed textbook and equally worn-out binder and laid them on the tabletop, keeping one eye on the doorway as he did so. Craig, Tweek, Jimmy, Token… the students continued to pour into the classroom, practically coming in droves. Kenny watched them, hoping that his casual exterior didn't betray the agitation he felt inside. He told himself that Butters would rather have an aneurysm than willingly skip class and he was probably just a little late. With a sigh, Kenny idly took out a pencil and doodled on the black surface of the desk while he waited.

A flash of blue caught his eye and Kenny's gaze returned to the doorway. Butters was just strolling into the room, or perhaps stroll was too dignified of a word - more like slid, Kenny thought. Yeah, that was it. Butters slid into the room, backpack slung over one shoulder, sporting the expression of someone who had recently sprinted halfway across the school. Kenny felt like his own heart had just finished the mile run. It thudded profoundly in his chest, beating out a happy rhythm as it flopped to and fro, spreading warmth from the core of his being to the tip of each extremity. It only did that when he was in Butters' presence, or when he was thinking about Butters. He wondered if Butters' body reacted the same way around him. _Not anymore_, Kenny answered himself. The only thing Butters probably felt around him now was the sharp sting of betrayal. Driven by that unpleasant thought, Kenny eagerly pushed out the seat next to him - Butters' seat - and patted it. Even before they'd started dating, Butters had always sat next to him in this class. Kenny would make jokes about the stuffy old fogies in their textbook until Butters had to pull up the collar of his shirt to smother his laughter, and Butters would patiently help Kenny with all the material he didn't understand (which was most of it).

But Butters was apparently not planning on reliving those memories any time soon, because as he crossed the threshold, he made a beeline toward an empty seat in the front row without so much as a backwards glance at Kenny. A mostly unfamiliar feeling bubbled up inside of Kenny, and it took him a long moment to correctly identify that feeling as one of rejection. He was somewhat used to being ignored, to being relegated to the background… but never by Butters. Butters always made it a point to include Kenny, ever since they were kids. And over the years, Kenny had grown so accustomed to being the focus of Butters' attention, and now, his _love_, that being so blatantly disregarded was like getting shoved into a pool of freezing water. _This sucks_, Kenny thought with a disconsolate frown.

The tardy bell rang and Mr. Garrison launched into another unenthusiastic lecture, laden with a gratuitous amount of swearing and insults that would have gotten him fired had he been teaching in a district other than South Park. As always, Kenny wasn't listening. He rested his cheek in his hand and kept his eyes glued not to the whiteboard, but to Butters - or, more accurately, Butters' back. Not one movement went undocumented in Kenny's mind. Butters' hand glided across the paper as he obediently took notes. Butters scratched behind his ear. Butters sneezed into the crook of his elbow. Kenny watched it all with the kind of painstaking attention to detail that could only be attributed to stalkers and teenage boys with a big-ass crush. He liked to think he was more of the latter.

About 15 minutes into class, the tip of Butters' pencil abruptly snapped off. His shoulders sagged as he held the broken pencil in front of his face, rotating it between a thumb and forefinger, probably uttering a litany of '_oh, hamburgers_' in his mind. The thought made Kenny grin. He watched with rapt interest while Butters stood up and ambled toward the pencil sharpener on the other side of the room, allowing his eyes to roam appreciatively up and down the other boy's body. People could talk until they were blue in the face about Kyle's ass, but Butters' was _much_ better, in Kenny's (totally unbiased) opinion. With a touch of horror, he realized that he'd never even properly felt Butters up. So many missed opportunities…

His eyes snapped back up only to find them staring straight into Butters' baby blues. For the first time in over a week, Butters was making eye contact with him. Not a quick sidelong glance, not an over-the-shoulder peek, but a full on _stare_. Kenny shuddered with exhilaration as he stared back, hoping to somehow telepathically communicate to Butters every emotion manifesting in himself at that moment: sadness, regret, affection, and, above all, a desire for reconciliation. _Give me a chance. Please._

"…And that's how the Democratic Party became the bunch of stuck-up, hippie assholes they are today," Mr. Garrison drawled, then sighed with pure exasperation as he observed the current scene between Butters and Kenny. "Butters, are you done bein' retarded yet?"

The mood was effectively shattered in a way that could only be accomplished by one Herbert Garrison. Butters' gaze ripped itself away from Kenny's, opting instead to retrain on his shoes. "I-I sure hope so," he murmured, so quietly that Kenny had trouble hearing it above the soft hum of the overhead projector.

Mr. Garrison, however, didn't seem to notice the obvious melancholy that dampened Butters' response. "So do I. Now sit back down and act like you give a rat's ass about politics," he demanded. When Butters did just that, he huffed out another sigh and turned to the rest of the class. "Have I ever told you how much I fucking _hate _teenagers?"

The class muttered a bored affirmative, because yes, Mr. Garrison told them _every day _about his extreme distaste for teenagers and how he had no idea what had possessed him to teach high school in the first place. Kenny had heard it all before, so he allowed himself to drift away once again. His mind was still stuck in a rut, clinging desperately to the brief moment of connection that had just transpired between him and Butters, the first one in a long time. It didn't sate him, not completely; he wanted more. He _needed _more. With a newfound sense of determination, Kenny ripped out a piece of lined paper from his empty notebook, jotted down his thoughts, folded it up, wrote Butters' name on the top, and then tapped Craig on the shoulder.

"Hey, Craig," Kenny hissed, "Turn around, man."

Tweek predictably jumped in his chair and spouted off a string of nondescript panicked noises, in direct contrast to Craig, who half-turned around calmly and fixed Kenny with an equally calm stare. "What?" he asked in that blasé, nasal way of his.

"I need you to pass this note up to Butters."

Craig's calm stare turned blank. "Why should I?"

"Um," Kenny hedged, blinking dumbly, "Because I want you to? Fuck, dude, I don't know. Stop being such a cocksucker."

"AH!" came Tweek's inevitable outburst. He swiveled toward Craig, grabbing fistfuls of the other boy's shirt and tugging on it. "He's onto us, Craig! Oh, God!"

Craig gently removed Tweek's shaking, clenched hands, glancing at Kenny out of the corner of one eye as he did so. "What's in it for me?" he wondered, still monotone.

Kenny sighed, already fumbling around in his coat pocket for a suitable reward. If Craig wanted to Jew him out of his money, fine. He would give Craig everything he had for Butters to receive the note. The pads of his fingers brushed against wrinkled paper and Kenny pulled out a crumpled-up dollar bill, extending it to Craig. "There. It's all I got. Can you give Butters the note, now?"

Craig took the cash with a satisfactory nod. "Cool. Thanks." He stowed it away and leaned across his desk, handing the note over to Patty Nelson, who accepted it and glanced in Mr. Garrison's direction before dropping it on Butters' desk. Kenny, too, leaned slightly forward out of anticipation, his hands curling around the edge of the table. Hope soared inside his chest as he watched Butters pick up the folded piece of paper, but it plummeted immediately when the blond stuffed it inside his binder without even opening it up. His grip on the desk tightened at the same time the rest of his body deflated. Butters had probably taken one look at his chickenscratch and known that it was from him. He should've predicted that Butters would ignore his note, just like he'd been ignoring anything and everything related to Kenny for over a week. It was getting kind of irritating. But in a way, he could understand where Butters was coming from. His heart had recently been broken by Kenny; he didn't want the fresh wounds, still unstitched and not cauterized, to be further inflamed. Speaking as someone who'd remained fairly guarded his whole life, he couldn't blame Butters for wanting to close himself off. It was perfectly understandable. That didn't make it any less painful for Kenny, though. He knew that he was the sole reason for Butters' self-imposed isolation and he hated it.

"Alright," Mr. Garrison announced, flicking off the overhead and grabbing a stack of packets off his desk, "Now that you all know how much I loathe this class, it's time for a group assignment that'll most likely make you turn on each other like the hormonal rats you are." He set the packets down at the front of each row. "Go ahead, you indecisive little pricks, pair off, don't be shy. Kenny, Butters, since you both decided to be antisocial losers today and sit by yourselves, I'm putting you two together."

"B-But, ah, Mr. Garrison, I-" Butters stammered.

"Quit your bitchin', Butters," Mr. Garrison retorted drily, shoving a packet into Butters' hands. "You think I didn't notice your guys' little eyefucking sesh? Well, I did. Now get to work, you can thank me later. Just don't try soliciting any gay sex in my classroom. This isn't one of those progressive, New Age, 'free love' schools; we have bathroom passes for a reason, dammit!"

Kenny inwardly groaned. Eyefucking? Really, Garrison? Just when he thought this situation couldn't get _any _more awkward… He squirmed uncomfortably, his face unusually warm, and glanced over at Butters to see his discomfort not just reflected in the other boy, but intensified tenfold. Poor kid. The tips of his ears and cheeks stained crimson, Butters gathered up his books and approached Kenny's desk like a condemned man would to a guillotine. Despite Butters' obvious unwillingness, Kenny couldn't suppress the small jolt of excitement that ran through him; _Butters was going to sit next to him! _He squirmed again, this time out of happiness, and tried to radiate acceptance as Butters drew closer. "Hey, Butters," he greeted quietly, pulling down his hood so Butters knew he was being serious.

Butters placed his books on the desk and sat down in the empty chair next to Kenny, perching precariously on the edge. This made Kenny frown. Two weeks ago, Butters would have been practically in his lap. Even before they started dating, Butters would sit so close to him that their upper arms were brushing, both seats pressed flush up against each other. Personal space had been basically unheard of between them, and now that it existed, it was almost painful. _It shouldn't be this way_, he thought. "Heya… Kenny," Butters said to the desk, choking on the last word as if it were a dose of medicine, bitter and stomach-churning.

Kenny swallowed his own disappointment at Butters' less than enthusiastic response and offered the other boy a wobbly smile, but Butters didn't see it. He continued to bore his gaze into the desk for a long moment, face taut and unreadable, before his eyes drifted shut. His whole posture - the way his shoulders sagged, the drooping head between them - suggested complete and utter defeat. Kenny's heart twisted painfully, pressed up against the wall of bone and muscle, straining to get closer to Butters. Closer, closer. He needed to be closer to Butters. As stealthily as possible, Kenny scooted the chair over, wincing at the loud screech of protest the wheels made when they scraped against the tiled floor. _Fucking shitty school furniture_. For a split second, Butters glanced at Kenny, eyes widened in bewilderment and confusion, but they darted away just as quickly. "Hey…," Kenny began, scratching the back of his neck. "Um… about what happened…" Damn it all, why couldn't he say what he wanted to say? The feelings were there, and he knew how he was supposed to express them - he had a trashcan full of wadded-up note cards to attest to _that_ - but now that the moment was here, he couldn't remember how to do any of it. He cast about in his mind for the right words, to no avail. They were all gone.

"Kenny," Butters interrupted him, voice sagging beneath the weight of unshed tears, "Don't… please. Just don't."

That was enough to shut Kenny down. He closed his mouth and nodded slowly, feeling strangely close to tears himself. Butters had never sounded this miserable, never been even _close _to sounding so miserable, and it was all Kenny's fault. Self-hate bubbled up inside of him overwhelmingly, only surpassed by his sympathy toward Butters. Butters must feel even shittier than he did. He looked sad, so, so sad, sadder than someone as great as Butters should ever have to feel. Kenny wanted to make sure Butters never felt that sad ever again. He wanted to start fixing things right now, but if Butters didn't want to talk about it, then Kenny wouldn't pressure him at the moment. It might be hard, but Kenny would wait years if that's what it took for Butters to be willing to accept him again. "Okay," Kenny conceded with a sigh.

For the next 20 minutes, Kenny made good on his promise not to pressure Butters. They worked on the packet together, though Butters was the one who did the majority of the work, of course. Mostly, they were silent. When they _did _speak, it was in short, clipped sentences, the kind that were supposed to be exchanged in conversation between classmates who barely knew each other, not between two boys who'd been friends since childhood. Kenny made sure his words were gentle, tailor-made especially for Butters. Butters, on the other hand, spoke with a formality that was almost excruciating. _His _words used to be filled with such liveliness, painting every sentence, no matter how boring, with the exuberant Technicolor in which Butters viewed everything in life. Now they just sounded lifeless. There was no brightness, no energy - just barely-concealed sorrow. Kenny didn't think American foreign policy had ever sounded quite so depressing.

It continued on in this manner until Butters abruptly switched topics.

"W-Was it hard?" he asked while writing down the answer to #23 in his neat, cartoonish handwriting.

Kenny blinked. "Huh?"

"Was it hard?" Butters repeated, still not looking at Kenny. "Bein' with me, I mean. Kissin' me, holdin' hands with me… pretendin' you actually liked me… I bet it was hard. I-I bet the whole time, you were thinkin' 'bout the other people you'd rather be doin' all that stuff with… tellin' yourself that you wouldn't hafta be with me much longer… that I'd magically get better, an' then y-you could dump me a-an' you wouldn't hafta waste your time on me no more." He squeezed his eyes shut, tilting his head away and pressing his knuckles against his mouth as he gathered himself. After a few seconds, he turned back to Kenny, transfixing him in his watery, blue-eyed gaze. "Why?" he croaked.

The words dug into Kenny's heart like a serrated knife. He had it all wrong, so completely and totally wrong. Butters wasn't a waste of time; the last month spent with him had been just about the most worthwhile thing Kenny had ever done, actually. The kissing, the hand holding… none of it was even remotely difficult. Being with Butters was easy as breathing. He sighed mournfully, covering Butters' free hand with his own, and reveled in the simple touch. It was amazing how just a brushing of skin could make every single nerve ending hyperaware, but Kenny guessed he shouldn't be surprised. Butters made him feel a lot of things that had previously been foreign to him.

For a long moment, words evaded him. So he didn't speak. He continued to hold Butters' hand, one finger tracing the dip of his thumb, the bumpy ridges of his knuckles, connecting two tiny beauty marks. Butters' hand had remained unmoving, but it slowly began to shudder to life. Hesitantly, Butters' fingers interlocked with his, fitting perfectly into the empty spaces between each digit. "I was trying to help," Kenny whispered around the lump in his throat. "Fuck, Butters. I just wanted to help."

Silence. Butters' hand, the one that wasn't entwined with Kenny's, curled in on itself, the fingernails digging deep into his palms. When he did speak, his voice was low. "I didn't want you helpin' me, Kenny," he said. "I just wanted you to like me, a-an' maybe someday, you coulda even learned to love me… maybe never as much as I love you, but gosh, even that would be okay, 'cause sometimes I dunno if it's possible for _anyone_ to love another person as much as I love you. But now I know I was just bein' stupid." Butters stared at their meshed fingers for a long beat, looking torn, before raising Kenny's hand off the table and brushing his lips across it. Those soft, beautiful lips. Kenny almost legitimately moaned. He craved Butters, any of him, _all _of him, so badly that it fucking _hurt_. Too soon, the light pressure on his hand disappeared. "You helped me just by bein' my friend, Kenny. You didn't… you didn't hafta pretend to feel somethin' you didn't."

"I wasn't pretending," Kenny blurted.

Surprise etched itself all over Butters' features, branding him. "Wha'… whaddya mean?"

"I mean," Kenny began, licking his too-dry lips, "Okay, so… I might not have liked you, you know, _that _way before I went out with you. But that changed. We started going out, and I got to know you better, and then… and then I started liking you. A _lot_. God. Just… shit, Butters." He chuckled sadly. "I really, _really _like you. I didn't have to pretend at all."

Butters stared at him in awe, hope glowing in his pale eyes before dying out. "How do I know you're not just sayin' that to make me feel better?" he asked. There was an edge to his voice - an edge that Kenny recognized as suspicion.

He tried not to wince. "You don't," Kenny admitted. "You just have to trust me."

Powder blue met cobalt as their gazes locked, both of them not daring to break contact. _Please believe me_, Kenny thought, putting on what he hoped was his most sincere and convincing face. For a brief, wonderful moment, it looked like Butters was going to do just that. Kenny could see the proverbial cogs turning in his head, and tried to imagine the other boy's thought process. Doubt, but that would be brief. Followed by a niggling hope. Maybe some more strangulating doubt, but the hope would triumph with the help of reason, and Butters would recognize that Kenny was telling the truth. Maybe he already knew, in his heart of hearts. Butters was the first one to look away.

"I-I… I don't think I can, Kenny," he murmured, and the look on his face combined with those words broke Kenny's heart a thousand times over. Butters didn't trust him.

Would Butters _ever _be able to trust him again?


	16. The Same Deep Water as You

**A/N: **If I hadn't made it obvious before, I love the Cartman and Butters dynamic.

Oh, and happy early Valentine's Day, y'all.

**Disclaimer: **Don't own South Park, but I really, really wish I did. Chapter title belongs to The Cure.

**Chapter 15**

_I miss you._

Butters stared down at the piece of notebook paper in his hands, creased and folded and crumpled from being haphazardly stowed away between homework and quizzes, the messy black ink standing out between pale blue lines like it was preparing to jump off the page and make a run for freedom. This was the first time he'd seen it. Up until a few minutes ago, it had taken up semi-permanent residence in his Government folder, where it had been staying, reticent, since the moment it was first dropped on his desk. He'd tried ignoring it. Whenever he had to retrieve an assignment and turn it in, he made sure not to catch so much as a glimpse of the note. His fingertips would probe the insides of the folder, gingerly separating its contents before extraction, skirting around that piece of paper with its slightly curled edges and dog-eared corners like a bomb would go off if it touched him. And it had touched him, once or twice. No bomb went off. Instead, it sent a shockwave of apprehension through him, coursing through his veins until his whole body hummed with nervous energy and he was forced to retreat even further inside himself. He went back to ignoring it. This was just one of many acts of cowardice that Butters had engaged in during these past two weeks.

They were different, yet they all revolved around one singular goal: to avoid Kenny and everything related to him. Different routes to classes were chosen, seats were switched, while lunchtime found Butters floating from table to table like the resident cafeteria gypsy, since he doubted he would feel comfortable sitting at his old table. He felt uncomfortable and terribly out of place in general, actually. It was like his shirt was on backwards and the tag was showing and assorted limbs were attached to the wrong sockets, and he didn't quite fit in anywhere. He was a perpetual square peg in a round hole. Life had always kind of been like that for him, but he had never been so aware of it until recently. That newfound awareness was bludgeoning him over the head, forcing Butters to conform to the reduced levels of his already low self-esteem, leaving him lost and cold and alone. He wanted nothing more than to gravitate back to Kenny's side because Kenny always made him feel better and like he was actually wanted, but he forced himself to resist the pull and hacked away at it bit by bit in small increments. It was a painful process, destroying such a powerful tie, almost like real self-mutilation. It hurt and it was tiring and he didn't want to do this anymore. But there was also a part of him that knew intrinsically that no matter how much this hurt – and boy, did it hurt – that being around Kenny would hurt even more. If he could barely even think about Kenny without feeling like a screwdriver was being shoved repeatedly into his heart, how would it feel to actually be in his presence? No amount of morbid curiosity could make Butters want to answer that question.

So Butters, essentially, withdrew into his little turtle shell and covered his eyes, though he couldn't help but see things through the cracks. They were small flashes and disjointed moments, the ends of actions caught by chance and burned into his memory in the split second it took for him to close the gap between each metaphorical finger. He didn't want to see them. He didn't want to see Kenny and how completely and utterly miserable he looked, but he did. Those little moments slipped between the cracks no matter how hard he tried to block them out, and they couldn't be magically filtered away, either. They were in his mind and on the backs of his eyes and they stuck there stubbornly, some more than others. Little observations, stupid ones more often than not, were usually the ones that stuck around the most. When Kenny was sad, he sort of looked like an adorable golden retriever puppy. That was one that Butters kept coming back to for some reason. He wasn't sure why he thought this, really – maybe it was because golden retrievers were his favorite dog and Kenny was his favorite person, and his subconscious had somehow linked the two of them together, and maybe Kenny's shaggy golden hair had something to do with it, too. There was Sad Kenny, and then there was Broody Kenny. Sad Kenny was heartbreakingly endearing, and whenever images of sad Kenny got past his blinders, he was always gripped with the overwhelming urge to hug him and do whatever he could to make it all go away. Broody Kenny was actually hot in the bad boy kind of way that Butters was secretly really attracted to but told himself he wasn't attracted to _at all_, no sir-ee Bob, not him, but it was always tinged by the melancholy and pain that came from seeing someone you loved hurting and not being able to do a gosh darn thing to fix it. Kenny was always either sad or broody when Butters accidentally saw him, never the Happy Kenny or Normal Kenny that he'd fallen in love with. It was almost enough to make Butters wonder if Kenny was so sad because he was… no. Bad Butters. He couldn't afford to think like that. There was no way that Kenny was heartbroken over him. Kenny was just a good person, that was all, a good person with a good conscience who probably saw how sad Butters was and got sore at himself because he knew it was his own fault. Romantic feelings had nothing to do with it – just guilt. He told himself this so many times it became his own personal mantra (_"he's just guilty, he doesn't like you"_), and eventually he was able to convince himself that it was true.

That was why he hadn't been expecting much of anything when a tiny bit of his morbid curiosity won out and he finally took the note from his Government folder, unfolding and smoothing it out with trembling fingers right there in the middle of class, and that was why his heart developed an arrhythmia when he read that one simple sentence: _I miss you_. It wasn't an _I'm sorry_, or an _I hope we can still be friends_, or anything even resembling an apology. Kenny missed him. He missed him in a vague way, but he still missed him nonetheless. Suddenly, Butters was presented with two possibilities: either Kenny missed him and his friendship, a platonic brand of longing, or Kenny missed him and their relationship, which fell under a more romantic category. He wasn't sure of Kenny's intentions. Maybe he really didn't know Kenny very well at all, and that was somehow the most depressing thought that Butters had ever dared to think.

It was too many things all at once – the hope that Kenny might miss him _that _way, the fear of sadness that would surely follow if he didn't, the uncertainty of it all – and he'd excused himself to go to the bathroom, where he was now trying to impede an oncoming panic attack. He continued to inspect Kenny's distinctive handwriting for a long moment before glancing up at the mirror, feeling the muscles in his face contract and watching his reflection look back at him with obvious disdain. Butters didn't like the way he looked. If asked what he didn't like about it, he couldn't tell you, simply because he didn't have an answer. There were no specific features that he could point to and say 'I don't like that'. All he knew was that his parents said he looked stupid, had been telling him that he looked stupid for about as long as he could remember, and they were usually right about other things so he figured this subject was no different. Too young. He looked too young. That much he knew. Puberty had hit his other friends, Kenny in particular, like a freight train, while it had hit him like… well, whatever the opposite of a freight train was. It had come slowly and belatedly and in its wake left a boy who was well into his teenage years yet still looked like a kid. He remembered reading somewhere that no one could love you until you loved yourself, and maybe that's why Kenny didn't love him, because Butters sure as heck didn't love the person looking back at him. Still, he couldn't help but hope. Butters had always been an optimist at heart. Hoping was all he knew how to do, really.

"Oh, Kenny," he murmured, hating himself for how pathetic he sounded as he hugged the paper to his chest, as if those words could sink in and feed his starving heart. "I miss you, too. I miss you a-a whole lot." And he really did miss Kenny. He missed him more than what he thought was possible, actually. Over the last month, he'd grown used to the natural rhythm they'd fallen into as a couple and now that it was gone, he felt like his whole planet had been knocked off its axis. The abrupt transition between being around each other all the time to never being around each other at all was a jarring one, and Butters didn't think he knew how to be alone anymore. He'd been too vulnerable, too emotionally invested, to shrug off their relationship and assimilate back into the crowds of single classmates. Maybe he'd always be a square peg in a round hole. Maybe he'd always be that one puzzle piece that was just a millimeter too small or had too many wrinkles around the edges or was a little too awkwardly shaped to fit into the big picture of Kenny's life, no matter how hard he tried to change himself to fit.

Optimism. Optimism.

He was inhaling deeply and sucking in mouthfuls of invisible optimism when the door flew open behind him, tiled walls colliding with the silver knob to create a resounding _bang!_. It was all Butters could do to brace himself against the sink, the fingers of one hand curling around its edge as he turned toward the noise's source, his other hand quickly crumpling the note into a ball. Standing in the doorway was none other than Eric Cartman, propping open the door with his foot while both eyes were obscured by a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers. "Butters," he began, lips pursing into a thin line as he fingered the sunglasses' temples. They were removed slowly, dramatically, and with a flourish, for no discernible reason other than Cartman's penchant for theatricality, which he chose to inject into every single action no matter how mundane or miniscule. He folded them up and stuffed them into the pocket of his red jacket, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. "We need to talk."

The walls of optimism that Butters had so carefully been rebuilding came down, brick by brick, destroyed by the anxiety that came from being in Cartman's presence. How did Eric find him? It was class time, after all, and Butters was in one of the three boys' bathrooms scattered throughout South Park High, instead of where he should be – in his classroom. Eric must have done an awful lot of snooping to have found him, an awful lot of snooping that Butters didn't really want to consider. It was best not to linger on the how's or why's of Cartman's actions, especially those that pertained to Butters, because they usually ended up being more than a little unsettling. So Butters didn't think about how Cartman could have possibly found him or why he'd want to in the first place. Instead, he clenched the note-holding hand even harder and turned to face the mirror again, noting the bitter expression being sported by his reflection out of the corner of one eye. "Go away, Eric," he muttered, trying not to sound like a total pussy for once in his life. It didn't work. Even to his own ears, the command sounded weak and whiny, a desperate last-ditch stab at dignity. This only made him feel bitterer. Why couldn't he just be mean to Eric? God knows that Eric was mean to _him_ all the time. Over the years, he'd learned to take Cartman's abuse in stride, convincing himself – perhaps foolishly – that Cartman only did those cruel things out of a misguided attempt to show affection. But if there was anything that he'd learned from this whole fiasco with Kenny, it was that Cartman was just plain mean. He was mean and he'd fooled Butters into thinking that Kenny liked him because he liked seeing Butters in pain. There could be no undercurrent of affection in something so blatantly sadistic, and if there was, then Butters didn't think he wanted to be the recipient of Cartman's affection anymore. He wished he could be mean to the people who hurt him, but he couldn't. He was Leopold "Butters" Stotch and he always tried to see the best in people and he was too nice for his own good sometimes, and some days he liked that about himself and some days he didn't, but he couldn't change that any more than he could change his stupid face or Kenny's feelings for him.

These thoughts were so engrossing that he'd completely forgotten Cartman was there until two large hands grabbed his waist from behind. "Eric!" he squawked indignantly as he was hoisted off his feet and then tossed, unceremoniously, over the larger boy's shoulder. "Wuh-what in the Sam Heck are you doin'?"

"I'm going to make you talk to me whether you want to or not, goddammit. Now shut the fuck up," Cartman commanded, shifting Butters' midriff to a more comfortable position on his shoulder like he was a mere sack of flour.

Butters silently cursed his scrawniness and tried to wriggle out of Cartman's grip, kicking at the arm wrapped around the backs of his knees while his fists pounded out a tattoo against the other boy's shoulder blades, even considering sinking his teeth in but doubting that Cartman would be able to feel it through all those layers of fat. Since physical struggle seemed to be getting him nowhere, he decided that his words were the only option left. "If you don't put me down right this instant, buster," Butters threatened, channeling his inner Professor Chaos, "Why, I'm gonna… y-you're gonna be in a world of hurt, ya hear?"

"Oh man, Butters, stop it, I'm pissing my pants 'cause you're just _sooooo _scary," Cartman intoned mockingly, jostling Butters harder than necessary as he strolled out of the bathroom.

The halls were empty as they passed through, and Butters wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, if someone was in the hallway, then maybe they could stop Cartman and Butters wouldn't have to feel so awkward anymore. On the other hand, he wasn't sure he would ever live down the humiliation that would ensue from being caught in a compromising position like this. He wondered if Cartman was aware of how inadvertently gay they must come across as to people. Probably not. If he did, he wouldn't always be putting themselves in situations like this. "Eric," Butters implored, squirming again.

Cartman dug his shoulder into Butters' stomach. "Shut your bitch mouth. Someone's gonna hear you and think you're about to get raped or something."

"…Am I?" Butters wondered, frowning deeply and bumping his knuckles together to stave off his growing panic. Eric had told him many times before that he was straight as an arrow, and he _did _have Wendy, but sometimes, Butters had to wonder about him. "Oh, geez. I-I don't think I like the sound of that very much at all, Eric. Nothin' against you, but–"

Cartman sighed, one of those heavy and exasperated sighs that made Butters feel like a retard every time he heard it, without fail. "No, Butters, I am not going to rape you. Okay? Jesus Christ monkey balls. I have ambitions, Butters. Big, larger-than-life ambitions, which include – but are not limited to – making Cartmanland a multimillion dollar business venture, funding a NASA mission to exile all persons of Jewish descent to a far-off planet without oxygen, and becoming the future CEO of Cheesy Poofs, Inc. Statutory rape would look bad on my record."

Butters decided not to mention that Cartman's 'record' was already more than spotty what with the numerous hate crimes he'd committed over the years, and, oh, that little Scott Tenorman incident back in elementary school. He was just a bit more concerned about the prospect that the only thing stopping Cartman from violating him right here and now was the fact that it 'would look bad' on his record. "Is that s'posed ta make me feel better?" Butters voiced his thoughts drily, arching one eyebrow.

"Hell no," Cartman said with a snort. "It's supposed to make _me _feel better."

And there was really nothing Butters could say to a comment like that, so he didn't. With a resigned exhalation, he cradled his cheek in his palm and allowed Cartman to carry him to wherever the heck they were going, listening as the other boy quietly sang a song about climbing in windows and snatching people up, and advising him to hide his kids and hide his wife, which Butters didn't have because he was 16 years old and gay, thank you very much, so he tuned it out about halfway through and tried to tell himself that this was most definitely _not _happening right now. After about 3 minutes of the unknown song plus some vocal improvisation from Cartman, they finally found themselves in the empty bus lot, where Butters was dumped precipitously onto the wet pavement.

"Ow," Butters murmured, shifting uncomfortably on the ground and rubbing his wounded backside. He still didn't quite understand why Cartman decided to bring him out here of all places, where it was damp and raw and well below freezing, when they had a school that was plenty warm and big enough to talk in right at their disposal. The frigid air stung at his balled hands, and he quickly withdrew them into the sleeves of his striped zip-up hoodie. Great. He was (technically) skipping class and risking the loss of numerous extremities just to talk to the second-to-last person he wanted to be around right now. This could definitely get him into trouble with the principal, which would earn him a grounding by extension.

Cartman, however, didn't seem to share his concerns. "Butters. You're a limp-wristed, fudge-packing, buttpirating queermo," he stated seriously, as if he hadn't been calling Butters all of these names on a regular basis for several years now. "I hate to say it, but ass pain is just going to be a fact of life for you, my friend."

Butters scowled as he rose unsteadily, trying hard not to slip on the ice and therefore offset his air of disapproval. "Eric, if you brought me out here just to be a no-good, stinkin' homophobe, then I'm a-leavin'!" he declared, crossing his arms over his chest more from the cold than an effort to look determined, though he supposed that _was _a nice side-effect.

"Don't move!" Cartman barked. When Butters reluctantly stayed rooted to the spot, his tawny eyes glinted with mild assent before growing fuzzy. "I'm thinking."

"Well, don't go hurtin' yourself," Butters advised sincerely. Cartman shot him a venomous glare.

"Black asshole," he spat, lips momentarily curling into a sneer. Clouds of breath rolled out and obscured his face as he looked down, lazily hanging in the air and solidifying, suspended, before being whisked away. The only sound pervading the mostly-vacant bus lot was the distant hum of traffic. Butters opened his mouth to fill the silence with something more substantial, but Cartman began to speak only seconds later. "I don't have a lot of friends," he admitted slowly, the words staccato, as if an invisible punctuation mark were placed after each syllable. "I used to tell myself it was because I was just too awesome for everyone in this lame town, and they either couldn't appreciate me or they were just jealous. You know; stuff like that. And I used to actually believe it when we were kids, but I was a weird-ass kid, seriously, and I believed a _lot_ of weird-ass shit. So… I don't believe that anymore." He gulped audibly. "I stopped believing that after Wendy broke up with me, actually. I just kept _acting _like I believed it, 'cause I'd rather have people think I'm a cocky dumbass than a total pussy, like Stan or Kahl. But at least they have tons of friends. I mean, _I _think they're totally lame, but… whatever. Anyways. I don't have tons of friends like Jewboy and his butt-buddy do." Cartman shuffled self-consciously, his gaze still focused on the ground. "And I only have myself to blame for that, 'cause I'm an asshole, and no one wants to be friends with an asshole. And yeah, that kind of sucks hairy balls sometimes. But it doesn't bother me a lot, partly 'cause I just don't _think _about it, y'know, I'm not like those 40-year-old child molesters that sit on Facebook in their Mom's basement all day and add people to their friend's list 'cause they get off on it or something, I don't know. My point is, the _main _reason I never cared about how many friends I had is because at least I always had _you_." A rattling sigh. "I know I've been a total douche to you over the years, but Wendy says that's just how I show people I like them or something… like, the more I rip on someone, the more I like them. Except for Kahl. I rip on Kahl 'cause he's a triple-J and I hate him and he looks funny when he's pissed off. But I don't hate you. It's… it's the opposite, actually." For the briefest of heartbeats, Cartman's voice softened with affection, if such a thing could be believed. "We don't have a secret handshake or BFF medallions like me and Kenny do, and I've never told you this before, but I always kind of felt like you were my real best friend. You're always nice to me even when I make you do really stupid things, and I feel like I could tell you pretty much anything… which I wouldn't, 'cause talking about feelings is hella weak, but if I wanted to, I could totally talk about that kind of shit with you. If I wanted to. Which I don't, so don't get any ideas." He sighed again, raking all five fingers of one hand down the front of his face. "And looking back on it, I can't _believe_ I set you up like that with Kenny. It was really, really shitty of me. Not coo' at all. I guess I thought it would be funny or something, but it wasn't. It's not funny. You probably hate me right now, and I don't blame you," he added quietly. "I'd hate me, too."

Butters eyed Cartman for what seemed like an interminable moment, his heart torn somewhere between hope, cautiousness, satisfaction, and fear. The part of Butters' spirit that had been battered and bedraggled over the course of the last couple weeks threatened to extinguish the tiny spark of buoyancy, but for the first time in a long time, he felt his characteristic idealism coming back full-force. A faint smile dancing across his face, Butters walked forward and took both of Cartman's larger hands in his own. "I don't hate ya, Eric," he said. "Gosh, I must be a masochist or somethin', but you're _my_ best friend, too. An' I forgive you, 'cause that's what best friends do: they forgive each other no matter how many times or how badly they mess up… but I ain't gonna lie, Eric. I'm still pretty sore at you. What you did to me – makin' me believe that Kenny liked me – well, that was just a downright mean-hearted thing to do, even for someone like you." He shook his head. "But I like to think I know ya better than most, so I can tell when you're actually sorry an' when you're just apologizin' to get a leg up on everyone else. This time, I'm thinkin' it's the former… you _are _actually sorry, right?"

"Yeah," Cartman said, nodding vigorously. "God, yeah. I am. And if you don't believe me…" He rolled his hands and pointed both forefingers in the direction of the school. "…then you can talk to my ex-ex-girlfriend, 'cause I just apol-ah-gized to _her _last week and she's been on my ass for days about apol-ah-gizing to _you_."

Butters cocked his head to the side. "So, wait. You 'n Wendy are gettin' back together?"

"Yep," Cartman boasted triumphantly, his countenance alighting with the softest, most ingenuous smile Butters had ever seen on his face. "It's pretty kickass."

"It is," Butters agreed, breaking out into a full-on grin. "I'm mighty happy for the both of you, Eric. How didja do it?"

Cartman appeared to be in deep thought. "…I was nice," he said at length, and from the sound of his voice, it was the first time he'd come to this realization.

The grin widened. "It does wonders, don't it?"

"It does, actually," Cartman agreed with a half-chuckle, and Butters wasn't sure whether to be more taken aback by the notion of Cartman actually _agreeing _with him or how plainly happy he looked. Both were incredibly rare and neither lasted long. For reasons unquestioned by Butters, Cartman was never content to stay genuinely happy for more than a span of approximately 54 seconds, at least outwardly. Butters liked to think that Cartman nursed his happiness privately, only truly indulging in it during those moments when either no one was watching or no one cared. This was not one of those moments. Cartman's eyebrows abruptly swooped down, all goodwill being displaced by his familiar and malicious scowl. "This doesn't change anything between us. Got it? I don't want you to think we have, like, some lame teen buddy-comedy bromance crap going on, because we don't. You're still the faggiest fag that's never shagged, I'm still going to be a total dick and make you dress up as a girl for my own sick amusement, and we did _not _just have a 'moment'. C'est la vie, ese? Carpe diem?"

"…Do you even know what you're sayin'?" Butters wondered, because, obviously, Cartman's gratuitous butchering of foreign languages was far more important than his avowal to 'still be a total dick'. Maybe it was because he'd been expecting Cartman to deny the reaffirmation of their friendship shortly after its conception. Cartman treated most of his 'human' emotions like he did his happiness: by compartmentalizing them into tiny boxes deep inside his soul, opening them and showing them to the world infrequently, and closing them off again before he could suffer any serious repercussions. Butters was lucky that Cartman had even opened the confines of his remorse in the first place.

"No," Cartman confessed, seemingly undeterred. "But it sounds _tits_, right?"

"Sure does," Butters agreed easily. When in doubt, it was always best to agree with Cartman, especially on issues that dealt with his perceived 'coolness'. A harsh gust of wind tore across the pavement and Butters' arms tightened around his chest, teeth clattering with frigidity.

"Speaking of hooking up again," Cartman said, adopting one of those persuasive tones that made Butters very, very nervous, "You need to stop being so butthurt, pronto, and get back together with Kenny already. Just sayin'." He extended his hands, palms-outward, and stuck up his nose in an equally noncommittal gesture. "I mean, normally I don't give a rat's ass who's boning who – especially not Kenny, 'cause he's the school bicycle and therefore has seen more dicks than a cheap, aging prostitute – but this is starting to get really fucking ridiculous."

The pain and irritation that Butters had been working so carefully to keep under control suddenly broke free of its bonds, severed by the mere mention of Kenny. His hands, previously encasing Cartman's own, abruptly dropped back to his sides. "Please don't talk about 'im," Butters said through still-clanking teeth, whirling away from Cartman in preparation to head back to the school. He didn't want to hear about Kenny. He especially didn't want to hear about Kenny's tendency to be a little 'easier' than most, even though he knew that was just a common misconception and Kenny really didn't sleep around as much as people thought. Or so Kenny had told him. Butters wasn't quite sure what to think about anything nowadays, which is why he'd rather not think about them at all, imagining that he lived in an alternate universe wherein the previous month and a half had never happened and everything was still sunshine and rainbows and unrequited Kenny-crushes like it used to be. He was good at imagining. Even he had to give himself _that _one.

"_Beuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhh_-tters," Cartman whined. The sound of snow crunching beneath shoe soles reached Butters' benumbed ears, but he didn't turn around. "You're really gonna leave me like this, right after an epic acknowledgment of our best friendship? Really? That's low, man. Real low. I can't believe that you, of all people, would turn your back on the moment of truth."

"You said we weren't havin' a 'moment'," Butters reminded him sullenly.

There was no immediate response from the usually quick-witted boy. Then, he clicked his tongue. "…Nnnnnnope, Butters," he drawled, fake innocence dripping from each word. "I don't recall saying that."

Typical Cartman. Denying that there was anything other than pure blackness in his soul one moment, and then using the very existence of that emotional side to manipulate Butters in the next. "You said – a-an' I quote – that I'm still the faggiest fag that's never… uh… shagged, you're still gonna be a total dick an' make me dress up as a girl for y-your own sick amusement, an' we did _not _just have a 'moment'."

"…Touche," Cartman muttered, sounding vaguely impressed. Butters used this moment of apparent provocation to scurry closer to the school's side entrance. "Ugh, goddammit, could you just hear me outfor a second? I'm really not lying this time! You've been too busy sulking around like a pussy little bitch to notice this, but Kenny practically worships the fucking ground you walk on! I mean, come _on. _Have you really not seen the way he looks at you? Really? Seriously?"

Butters tried with all his might to ignore Cartman, because Cartman usually lied – because Cartman almost always lied – but in the end, he was just too darn curious to ignore anything that related to Kenny. "Um. H-How does he look at me?" he asked tentatively, gnawing on his lower lip.

"Like the sun shines out of your ass," Cartman replied, dead serious.

Butters frowned thoughtfully and half-twisted to inspect his backside. "Is that – is that a good thing?"

"You bet your sweet sunshine ass it is," Cartman said. "But for serial, dude. Kenny has such a massive emotion-boner for you that it almost pisses me off. He literally _never shuts up _about you. I tried to hang out with him a few weeks ago, and the whole time he was like, 'Oh hey, we should invite Butters over, he's a lot kewler than you give him credit for', and I, of course, was all 'hell naw'. I also told him that I wouldn't willingly hang out with you if we were the last two people on Earth, and if it was a choice between hanging out with you and letting rabid coyotes chew off my dick, I'd so choose the coyotes, but he _still _managed to insert you into every single conversation. Not even kidding." He reached inside the front flap of his jacket and withdrew a rumpled paper, which he pawed over to Butters. "Look, I even secretly recorded everything he said and made a fuckin' pie chart out of it. As you can see, his usual conversational topics – tits, dicks, beer, NASCAR, and how generally crappy his life is – were reduced to a mere 23%, while the other 77% was comprised entirely of Butters, Butters, and more Butters." The only information that Butters could glean from the chart was how strikingly it resembled a Pac-Man, and then Cartman was snatching it from his grasp, coughing authoritatively. "I fear that these statistics will only continue to grow until he talks about nothing _but _you… that is, if he ever talks again. I, personally, have not heard a word come out of his mouth in over a week. It's quite worrisome, actually. I haven't seen him this upset since the Missing Marijuana case of '08."

The frown that had previously just been hovering on Butters' lips, as if uncertain whether it wanted to stay there or not, suddenly deepened. He was sure that the majority of Cartman's speech was pure embellishment, but the part about Kenny having not spoken in over a week struck a chord with him. True, Kenny was naturally a quiet kid – not shy, since he had no qualms speaking his mind and was pretty dang forward when it came to things he wanted – but to hear that he hadn't been speaking at all? Butters found this hard to believe and yet, it made perfect sense with the accidental observations of Kenny he'd garnered over the last couple weeks. The sadness, the dejection, the few times Butters had dared to full-on look at Kenny and found him already looking back, and now this new information from Cartman… all of it was starting to come together, forming a picture that contradicted heavily with the one Butters had formed in his mind. What if Kenny had been telling the truth? What if that niggling voice in the back of his mind, the one that said Kenny's grief stemmed not from guilt, but from heartbreak, had been right? What if Kenny really did have feelings for him? It was a beautiful and exciting and terrifying and saddening thought all at the same time; beautiful and exciting because the one thing he wanted more than anything in the world was for Kenny to like him, terrifying and saddening because if Kenny wanted to be with him and Butters had been avoiding and doubting him all this time, then he was an awful, awful person for putting Kenny through so much needless pain. "Oh, hamburgers," Butters murmured, fidgeting guiltily.

Cartman plunked a heavy hand atop Butters' head, lifting it up and down in a condescending pat. "There, there," he cooed, the softness of his voice contrasting with the violent way he was practically smacking Butters. "You know what would totally cheer you up? If you went with me and Wendy to WinterFest this weekend."

Butters blinked, all thoughts of Kenny now banished. "B-But you hate dancin'," he reminded the other boy.

"I hate it with a fire that burns deep within my soul, yes," Cartman said. "And so does the ho. But the ho's friends have raging ladywood for school dances and lame crap like that, and they're forcing her to come, which means that she's forcing _me _to come as her date, and now _I'm _forcing _you _to come."

Butters still couldn't see the connection between Wendy and Cartman going to the dance and _him _and Cartman going too, but maybe this was another thinly-disguised attempt at true 'best friendship' on Cartman's part. Unless… "Eric, a-are you plannin' somethin' for me, an' that's why you wanna take me to WinterFest?"

Cartman just laughed.

* * *

Kenny was pretty sure that killing yourself over a breakup was supposed to be a hell of a lot more dramatic than this.

In his defense, it wasn't a very premeditated act. He hadn't woken up that morning and thought, "Hey, I'm going to blow my brains out today!" and then spent the next 7 hours composing some long-ass suicide note. The thought of being dramatic never even crossed his mind. Not because he was looking at his potential self-immolation in a practical way rather than a poetic one – he was just too busy being dramatic in _other _forms… like curling up under the cover of 5 billion layers of blankets on his couch with a bucket of ice cream in one hand and his old parka in the other (it had shown up mysteriously on his doorstep one night, presumably dropped off by Butters ) while he watched _Moulin Rouge _for perhaps the 7th time since that fateful night. And no, he was totally _not _being a pussy about this. His angsting was completely and 100% validated, and said angsting was done in a very manly fashion, thank you very much. He was going to stick by that theory no matter what Kevin thought.

"…What the hell are you doing?" the aforementioned older brother said as he strode into the living room, effectively tearing Kenny's attention away from a particularly sexy Nicole Kidman.

Kenny buried his face in the pillow and raised one hand in an offensive gesture. "Fuck off, I'm brooding," he mumbled - not whined. There was no way he was whining. He was just being righteously grumpy, that was all.

"Are you flipping me off?"

"No, my middle finger just got a boner for you, Kevin," Kenny drawled. Stupid questions deserved sarcastic answers, and he was too upset and hung over to care about the feelings of others. "What do you _think_?"

"You're such a little douchebag."

He lifted one shoulder and then dropped it in a noncommittal shrug. "Meh."

Kevin was, of course, pissed off at that. Or, at least, Kenny assumed that he was pissed off; it was kind of hard to see the older McCormick while lying facedown in a cocoon of blankets and pillows, but he could clearly hear a soft hiss of frustration and felt the air around him grow thick and thus deduced that Kevin was a little pissed. Just a little, though. "Whatever. This is really fucking gay."

"_You're _really fucking gay!" Kenny retorted, maturely.

"Dude, you're the one who's watching some freaky musical on repeat because your boyfriend dumped your sorry ass. It doesn't get much gayer than that."

And, well, there was really no way you could argue with _that _kind of logic.

Once Kevin left to go presumably spend his time on more worthwhile things, Kenny listened to the crackling music that poured out of their black-and-white TV set – at this point, he knew every word to every song, though he was loathe to admit it – and pulled the ratty blankets over his head, like that could somehow get rid of the explosive pain in his skull. He had gotten drunk last night. By this, he doesn't mean that he had a few drinks and went to bed mildly tipsy. No. That was how normal people got drunk, but that wasn't how Kenny McCormick got drunk, especially not a depressed and downtrodden Kenny McCormick. In a moment of extreme irrationality, he had pilfered his Dad's entire cupboard of scotch and then proceeded to drink it (alone) in his room. He had drank and drank and drank until alcohol ran through his veins, deadening his limbs, numbing his senses, and he was forced to stumble into the bathroom and let it come back out of him again, and there he stayed for the rest of the night, legs buckled underneath him and skin touching cracked porcelain. Even while totally sloshed, the only thing that had run through his mind was Butters. Specifically, Butters as he used to be, when they were both kids and Butters was very much innocent and Kenny very much wasn't, the repugnant stench of cat piss still wafting into his nostrils overwhelmingly. He remembered Butters holding him. His hand on Kenny's back, rubbing, patting. So kind, so gentle, and so comforting, too. The platonic love seeping from his fingertips, only to be absorbed by Kenny's huddled body. His voice, a quiet, babyish coo, consoling him, comforting him, letting him know that it would all be okay. He wished Butters was there to do all those things for him again. He wanted Butters to rub his back and give him coffee and tell him it was all going to be okay, don't worry Ken, drink up, buddy, get some sleep, and maybe Butters would kiss him on the cheek because his mouth tasted like ass and was about as sanitary as one, too. The prospect of this dream becoming a reality was probable to his alcohol-impaired brain. Butters would show up. Butters would be there for him. Butters had always been there for him, had always stuck right by his side, even while wearing Kenny's vomit all over him. This time would be no different. So Kenny had waited, letting his sweat-slickened hair fall in his face because Butters would be there to hold it back, doing nothing to fix the cramping in his muscles because Butters would show up to ease the tension right out of them, allowing himself to succumb to his weakness because Butters would make it right, because Butters _always _made it right. He waited. He puked. He waited. He dry heaved. He moved away from the toilet, collapsing on a Pepto Bismol-pink rug. He waited some more. Butters didn't show up. He fell asleep.

When he awoke, his eyes were red and puffy. He told himself it was from the alcohol.

But now, as he burrowed even further into the swathe of blankets, staring at the TV screen through the thin blue fabric veiling him, he wondered if he really believed it. Kenny didn't cry often. His rough life had desensitized him to physical pain - hunger, aching, death… he could deal with all that. _Buck up_, he'd tell himself on the rare occasion that the urge to cry did grip him. _You'll survive. And if you don't… hey, you get to come back to life and try it all over again_. Physical pain was a fucking cakewalk. It was something intimately familiar to him. But this, this _emotional _pain, was a different beast altogether. He hadn't ever experienced something on quite this level before. The rational side of his brain told him there was no way blood could be oozing out of his heart, but fuck, it sure felt like it was bleeding. The rest of his body was the same way; he was well aware that it remained as full and healthy as ever, but it _felt_ empty. Physical pain was not the same as emotional pain and loneliness was not equivalent to being alone. Being physically hurt and alone was routine, while being emotionally hurt and lonely was not. He had no idea how to deal with it. He was drowning in its waters, kicking and thrashing while it filled his lungs, suffocating him. Kenny had drowned before. He knew what it felt like to be moving in slow motion, fighting against the current with all you had before finally running out of breath and accepting defeat. That was exactly how he felt at the moment: tired, lonely, and fading. He didn't know _why _this separation from Butters hurt so much, but it did, so maybe it wasn't too implausible that he'd let a few tears slip, especially while under the influence of nearly an entire cupboard of scotch. Drowning – whether real or metaphorical – sucked. Drowning was something worth crying over.

The more he thought about it, though, he began to realize that saltwater was still water nonetheless and crying was not going to help him. If anything, tears would only add to the stifling deluge. Instead of deferring to the undercurrent, he should fight against it. Instead of crying and moping over this situation with Butters, he should go out there and change it. Only action would yield results.

Unfortunately for Kenny, this was a lot easier said than done. He knew that if he wanted to get back together with Butters again, he must get off his ass and stop watching _Moulin Rouge_, for one thing, and sometime after that, he would have to convince Butters of his trustworthiness. But how? Kenny had never given anyone a reason to mistrust him in the past – he liked to consider himself fairly reliable, if nothing else – and he'd never been invested in a relationship enough to want to salvage it after it ended. He wasn't sure where to begin picking up the pieces, and he had no idea how to put them back together once gathered. Broken hearts were not like broken bones, or any other type of physical affliction; there was no medical treatment, no cast to put it in and wait awhile for it to heal. Broken hearts were difficult to mend, and he suspected that broken trust was even more so.

So Kenny, in essence, knew only that he had to swim, but knew nothing of which direction he should take. Had he been someone with an overinflated ego, this would be a much bigger challenge than it already was. But Kenny, thankfully, was _not _egotistical and possessed only enough pride to give him a decent sense of self-worth. From a young age, he'd been raised to accept handouts. He was dirt-poor. Plain and simple. And when you were that poor, when every hour of every day of your life was literally a struggle to survive, there was no room for dignity. Poverty instilled in you a sink-or-swim mentality. You could swallow your pride and do what it took to get food, or you could be a stubborn jack-off and go hungry. Kenny decided that this mindset could be applied to his current situation as well. He could very well just sit here and try to choose his plan of action by himself, no matter how futile it would surely be, _or _he could search for advice from someone else. At this point, he didn't care where or from whom he learned the way to restore broken trust. Kenny was too fatigued to care about pretention and he had never been above begging. He would do anything, beg from anyone, even a complete and total stranger, to be back in Butters' good graces. Luckily, Kenny already knew the person he was going to beg from. _Un_luckily, that person had also been dead for a good 7 years. But death wasn't an obstacle for Kenny McCormick. His mortality was flexible, and he was going to use that to his advantage.

He stood up.

He went into his bedroom.

He opened the top drawer of his dresser, pulling out a shotgun from where it lay underneath his old Mysterion costume.

He draped some white sheets over his bed and on the floor. (He didn't want to get blood everywhere)

He raised the gun to his head, thought _this had better fucking work_, and pushed down on the cold metal trigger.

And then he was dead. Again. For at least the one thousandth time.

Darkness surrounded him, enveloping him, smothering him. It was all-encompassing as far as vision went, but his other senses remained unaffected. The splitting headache, residual of his hangover, was now gone, and the only pain in his body was the discomfort that came from lying on a hard surface. Asphalt, maybe? Whatever it was, it definitely was _not _Kenny's bed, no matter how old and shitty it might sometimes feel. _I'm in Hell,_ Kenny thought. _Or, well, I HOPE I am. _Most times he killed himself, he just ended up regaining consciousness in his bed the next day. The rest of the time, he only caught brief glimpses of Heaven or Hell, and it was even rarer that he actually went to either of the Afterlives. He listened to the sounds of broken Spanish and traffic for a long moment before pushing himself into a sitting position, whereupon he finally opened his eyes. The sight of smokestacks rearing up against a fiery sky greeted him, in addition to numerous trinket shops and, in his peripheral vision, the rather entertaining spectacle of Hitler playing guitar for money on a street corner.

There was no doubt about it: Kenny was in Hell. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised, considering what he'd been up to recently. Where else would he have gone? Heaven? You didn't go to Heaven for breaking the heart of an angel.

His brief moment of satisfaction was destroyed when a putrid, nearly vomit-inducing scent hit his nose. Hell smells bad. It smells like all the trash in the world got together and had a huge, nasty, unprotected orgy, and then obligatorily dumped off their stinky, retarded, illegitimate child in the Underworld. No matter how many times Kenny came to Hell, he was _still _taken off guard by its foul and pervasive stench. He tightened the drawstrings on his hood and stood up, trying to block out the stomach-roiling odor as he made his way down the sidewalk, over the bodies of sleeping hobos and around street vendors selling lava-coated pigeons. "_Dios mio_," Kenny muttered under his breath.

In actuality, Hell was not as bad as the Bible made it seem. Sure, on some days it _was _downright torturous, but these aspects were grossly exaggerated. The brand of agony that Hell specialized in was strangely domestic, like everything that had ever annoyed you on Earth was brought together and then compounded to make it 100x more annoying. Traffic lights always turned red as soon as you reached the intersection, micro-civilizations of gum thrived on every surface imaginable, and the radio stations refused to play anything other than pop and Top 40… from the year 1989. There were also some aspects that affected certain individuals only. For example: Kenny hated rats. He hated the little bastards with the red hot intensity of a thousand suns. And just because Kenny hated them so much, Satan – or whichever minion dished out 'personal punishments' in Hell – made it a point to have at least a dozen rats stalking Kenny throughout the entirety of his semi-regular trips through the Underworld. This didn't happen to anyone else, of course. They surely had their own pet peeves that followed them after death. But other than the annoyances and the stench, Hell was actually pretty decent. It was way more fun than Heaven, anyway. In Hell, you could catch a Jimi Hendrix concert, bang Marilyn Monroe, and have an intellectual conversation with Socrates over a few pints of beer, all in one night (but not necessarily in that order). In Heaven, you had the wonderful opportunity to… hang out with some Mormons. Yeah. Not very fun.

As a dilapidated White Castle – the only restaurant chain in Hades – came into view, Kenny could feel the gaggle of rats burning their beady gazes into his back. He knew instinctively that they were scrutinizing him, watching him, studying his body like a morbidly obese kid might study a Big Mac, just _waiting _for the right moment to pounce and snack on his flesh. This all probably sounded very paranoid, which Kenny understood, but he liked to think that his paranoia was at least somewhat validated. It was hard _not _to be paranoid when furry rodents had been randomly materializing to go to town on your decaying body since childhood. He wasn't sure why, though; he couldn't imagine that he tasted very good. Rough and stringy, probably, considering that he was 5'11" and weighed, like, 140 fucking pounds. Not very nutritional - he lived on a diet of Pop Tarts and powdered milk and commodity foods, after all. The organs were basically shot as well. His liver was weak and fatty, the result of early alcoholism, his lungs coated with nicotine, and his heart… well, he doubted _that _was tasty, either. Bitter, bloodless, broken. How was any of that appealing?

He ignored the rats and their crappy taste in prospective human meals to the best of his abilities as he entered the White Castle. Immediately, his nose scrunched up in distaste. Jesus H. Christ. White Castle smelled even nastier than the rest of Hell, if that was possible. With a mild gag, he strolled across the grease-soaked floor and approached the counter, pulling down his hood as he did so.

"Hello, welcome to White Castle," said the cashier, a girl who seemed to be about Kenny's age. If you overlooked the telling gash in her neck, she was actually quite attractive, with long, flowing brunette hair and a decent sized rack. Kenny might have even considered her hot, if his libido wasn't at a record low. He hadn't been even remotely interested in anything sexual since this whole thing with him and Butters went down, to be honest, and jacking off had become something of a chore. It was like there was an invisible line connecting his heart to his dick. "May I take your order?" she asked with a flip of her hair.

Kenny shook his head politely. "Nah, I'm not buying anything," he explained, craning to glance just past her. "Is Chef McElroy here?"

She blinked. "You wanna talk to Chef?"

"Yep," Kenny replied, forcing a smile.

"Okay," she said, and flipped her hair again. Kenny wasn't really sure why the hell so many people – both chicks and guys with longish hair – did that every other second. It wasn't particularly cute, or attractive, or even endearing; it just looked like the fucking muscles in their neck were spazzing out. Butters never did that, because his hair was short. Butters had nice hair. It was soft and fluffy and just thick enough to run your fingers through but thin enough to feel the warmth rising from his skin… and man, was Butters warm, like all the sweetness and love inside his soul had trapped itself in his epidermis, so warm, in fact, that Kenny felt like he could be in Ant-freakin'-arctica and survive just by wrapping himself in Butters. He wished he could spend every hour of every day wrapped up in Butters… "I'll go get him. Be right back." He snapped out of his daydream in time to see the cashier winking coyly, and yeah, there was that spazzy neck-thing again, right before she turned around and went into the kitchen. Kenny just shrugged and scratched at his jaw awkwardly. He was really in no mood to be flirty.

"Hello there, children!"

The deep, familiar greeting reached Kenny's ears, bringing with it a sense of comfort and nostalgia. No matter how old Kenny got or how many times that phrase was uttered, it always had the same effect on him. Smiling genuinely now, Kenny watched as the voice's source emerged from the kitchen with a red-skinned demon babe clinging to each arm, and chuckled to himself. Even in death, Chef was a total ladies' man. Some things never changed. His appearance in general had remained mostly the same; there was still that wise, friendly glow to his eyes, and the trademark chef hat perched upon his head. The only changes seemed to be his apron, now emblazoned with the White Castle logo, and the slight salt-and-pepper tint to his facial hair. All in all, he was the same old cafeteria cook that had guided him and his friends through childhood. This made Kenny happier than he could really put into words.

"Hey, Chef," Kenny greeted, sidestepping away from the cash register to let other people order their food. "Remember me?"

It was meant to be a facetious question, not a serious one. How could Chef _not _remember him? Sure, he hadn't visited him in Hell since before the onset of puberty, but they had a lot of history. Along with Stan, Kyle, and Cartman, Kenny had been seeking advice from Chef for years before his untimely death. He had been the sole adult in town they respected as an authority figure, and Kenny liked to think that Chef had a soft spot for them, too. But if Chef recognized him, he certainly wasn't acting like it. "Hm. 'Fraid not, son," he said, confirming Kenny's suspicion as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. "We get a lot of teens looking like you around here. Do I know you?"

Kenny gave a good-natured roll of his eyes before flipping up his hood, tautening the drawstrings as far as they could go. "It's Kenny fucking McCormick," he replied. "Remember me _now_?"

Recognition instantly brightened the man's features, manifesting itself in the form of his wide, white-toothed grin, which contrasted sharply against his dark skin. "Now I do!" he said, the words bolstered by a belly laugh. He unhooked his arms from where they had previously been draped around the demon women's shoulders, whispered something to them – probably some smooth pick-up line, judging by their giggles – and walked around the counter to clap Kenny heartily on the back. "Damn, you children are probably all grown up now, huh?"

Kenny returned the grin. "Yeah, you could say that."

"That's just a little bit scary," the older man remarked, shaking his head wonderingly. "Lord, it's been a long time… You're not here to ask me about some new sexual lingo, are you? My singing skills are kind of rusty."

Kenny averted his gaze. "Um, no," he mumbled, "It's kind of personal, actually."

Chef nodded, the somber expression on his face reflecting the gravity of the situation. That was just one of the many great things about Chef; he knew when to be serious, and was damn good at it, too. Emotional maturity in adults was probably a given to most people, but not to South Parkians. When you lived in South Park, common sense wasn't just uncommon, it was fucking _rare_. "Alright, alright," he conceded, jerking a thumb in the direction of two empty window seats. "My break's comin' up soon. We can talk over there."

Kenny followed the former South Park Elementary cook over to the table in question, where he slid into one of the booths. There was a rather off-putting yellow stain near the condiments, but Kenny ignored it, instead folding his hands atop the table and watching as his erstwhile mentor shifted in the booth opposite him. "How's it going?" Chef asked.

"Bad," Kenny answered, huffing out a morose sigh.

"Why bad?"

He analyzed the mysterious stain for a long moment before deciding it grossed him out too much, at which point he stared down at his interlocked, mitten-encased fingers like the Scriptures were written across them. "Chef," he began, "Have you ever… um, been involved with someone you didn't have feelings for?"

"Lots of times," Chef replied easily, adopting his characteristic lecture voice. "See, Kenny, when a man and a woman are physically attracted to each other very, very much, but they have no romantic feelings for one another, they get together and have what is called 'casual sex'."

Kenny shook his head. "Right. I know that. But what if you never had sex with them? What if you didn't have feelings for someone at first, but they had feelings for you – well, not just feelings. What if they were in love with you, and this person had some… problems, I guess, and since they were a good person and you wanted to make them feel better about themselves, you went out with them?"

Surprise was evident in Chef's widened eyes. "Oh, hell no," he exclaimed, "This _can't _be good."

"It's not," Kenny admitted. "Trust me."

A long, exasperated sigh came forth from the older man's lips. He took off the chef hat, holding it in one large hand, while the other one ran over his smooth skull. "Look, son," he said at length, "What you were talking about and what I was talking about… they're two completely different things. Some people don't want love; they just want sex. And when both persons involved in a relationship acknowledge that they don't want commitment, just physical lovin', well – that's okay. But only if they both understand what it's about. That way, there's no making assumptions and getting hurt. When someone is _in love _with you, and you're in a committed relationship with them, they're going to assume that you at least have some feelings for them, too. And God forbid if they find out…"

"He found out a couple weeks ago," Kenny interrupted.

Both black eyebrows rose with obvious incredulity. "'He'?"

"Yeah," Kenny confirmed, unable to suppress a shit-eating grin in spite of himself. "I like dick sometimes."

"Hm. I don't think I ever pegged you as one of those types," Chef confessed, arms crossed over his chest. "Eric seemed… a bit confused, to say the least, but _you _were always a li'l ladykiller."

Kenny shrugged. "Hey, a hole's a hole. I'm not picky," he joked. In all seriousness, despite the fact that Kenny was undoubtedly horny 80% of the time, there were other factors involved besides 'I have blue balls and need a hole to fuck'. The part about not being picky _was _true, though. He didn't ask for a lot, and maybe that was why he liked Butters so much: because Butters was everything he could ever ask for and so much more, so much that he liked but never knew, and so much that he'd never thought to ask for but really, really appreciated. Oh, Butters. The thought of him made Kenny's shit-eating grin melt away and his heart twist with longing. He glanced out the window, watching as a man who could only be Billy Mays surreptitiously dealt drugs on the adjacent street.

Chef's affable laughter broke him out of his thoughts. "Sometimes I think I was a terrible influence on you children, what with the things you go around sayin'."

Kenny chuckled at that, but otherwise said nothing. As much as he'd like to reminisce with Chef, he had more imperative things to talk about, and he would like to get them discussed as soon as possible. Time worked differently in Hell than on Earth, and his allotment could run out at any moment. He looked to Chef again. "You remember Butters Stotch, right?"

"Short, blond li'l cracka with the weird accent?" Chef asked, waving one hand in a vague gesture.

Kenny smiled fondly. "Yep, that's the one."

"Sure, I remember him," Chef replied. "But why?"

"Well…" Kenny shifted in the booth, sitting more upright, and tapped his fingers against the surface of the table. "He's kind of the person I went out with."

There was a brief, slightly awkward silence. "Huh," Chef said, clearing his throat. "I'm not gonna lie: I did _not _see that one coming."

"Me neither," Kenny confessed. "I mean, I guess I've always thought he was pretty cute, but if someone had told me a few months ago that I'd go out with Butters Stotch, I probably would've laughed my ass off. It just… I never pictured it, you know? We seemed too different. He's all innocent and naïve and optimistic, and I'm like the complete fucking _opposite_ of all those things. But I think that's why we get along so well. We're not the bad kind of different. Like some couples, there'll be one person who's a total manipulative asshole and one who's too nice to stand up to them, and they're opposites, yeah, but they're the bad kind. Me and Butters… we're the good kind. Our differences make us better, not worse. I'm sort of a jerk sometimes, even though I don't mean to be, I'm just cynical, but Butters gives me hope and makes me want to be a better person. And Butters – fuck, he's just so _clueless _sometimes, but he can't help it either, and I think I kind of keep him grounded. So, basically, we balance each other out. And we get along really well, too." He chuckled to himself. "I'm not just saying that, either. We really, _really _get along well. We pretty much never argue and maybe we'd argue a little more if we were together longer, but it wouldn't be anything big, and if we _did _get in a fight, I think we'd fix it pretty quickly because we're both just the types of people who want to make things work. But yeah. Everything is really easy around him. All the stuff that usually annoys the everliving _shit _out of me… when I'm around Butters, I don't notice any of it. It's like nothing bad even exists. Because Butters is such an amazing person, and God. Fuck. He really is amazing. Honestly, he's the greatest person I've ever met, and he's just so nice and happy and beautiful that he makes everything around him nice and happy and beautiful, too. You can't _not _be happy when you're around him, because he's just that kind of person. He always makes me happy. And I think I'd do anything to make _him _happy, too. I… I ended up feeling for him a hell of a lot more than I thought I would, actually." He swallowed thickly, and tried to speak past the lump that had lodged itself in his throat. "And it scares me sometimes, because I always like people more than they like me. Stan and Kyle, for example. You know them; they have their Super Best Friends bullshit, and I always secretly wanted to be like that with them, or, hell, _anybody_, but I was always the leftover friend. The drinking buddy. The funny guy, the one you can dare to do pretty much anything, but not your _best _friend like Stan and Kyle are to each other. I've kind of gotten used to that, so I have to remind myself all the time that Butters fucking _loves _me because I still can't even believe it when someone _likes _me. It just blows my mind. But it's a happy feeling, too. And Butters doesn't even _know _all that shit. After he found out about why I first started going out with him, I tried telling him how I felt, but he didn't believe any of it. That's my fault. I can't really blame him for not believing me, but at the same time, I _want _him to believe me so fucking badly. Not just that – I want _him_. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I need to make it up to him and get back together, but I'm not sure how. That's why I'm here." He leaned back in the seat, tongue swirling around in a futile attempt to dampen his dry mouth again. Had he ever spoken that much in his entire life? He didn't think so.

Chef was silent for a long moment, watching Kenny carefully. "Have you tried telling him you're in love with him yet?" he proposed.

"What do you mean?" Kenny asked, his brow wrinkling. "I'm not in love with him, Chef."

The reaction to this statement – a big, booming guffaw – caught Kenny off guard. He didn't think he'd said anything funny, so why was Chef acting like he'd just told the funniest joke known to mankind? The older man continued to laugh, but when Kenny didn't join in, it quickly died down. His eyes flashed first with disbelief, then with frustration. "Oh, you have GOT to be shittin' me, son!" he cried, slamming his hands, palms-down, on the table. A few strange looks were cast their way, but Chef paid them no mind. "Did you not hear a fudging _word _of what you just said? You couldn't be more in love with him if you tried!"

For a moment, Kenny's mouth moved silently, lips brushing against orange polyester, forming the outline of words he could not say. _But I'm not in love with him_, would have been his response if he still possessed the power of coherent thought. He had entertained the notion of being in love with Butters on multiple occasions, but only in the way that a jaded child might entertain the notion of unicorns: with a small scrap of naïve hope, overshadowed by misanthropy and skepticism. Love came easy for people like Butters, but Kenny had begun to think that it wasn't possible for him. When Butters discussed it, love became a simple concept, pure and easy and uncomplicated – as Butters made most things in life. He had a firm grasp on his emotions, knew them inside out and backwards and forwards with the kind of precision that Kenny could only wish for. Kenny felt stupid and inadequate in Butters' presence when it came to this. He remembered what Butters had said at Stark's Pond, with the moonlight in his hair and his pale blue eyes holding a wisdom that belied his innocence: _"you just KNOW when you're in love…"_ That sentence had stuck in Kenny's mind for days on end until days turned to weeks and weeks led to this moment. In the short interim between that night and their kind-of sort-of breakup, he remembered watching Butters and waiting for some big, overblown epiphany, for the proverbial lights to go off in his head and spell out 'I'M IN LOVE' like a cheesy neon Las Vegas display. He remembered the feeling of Butters' fingers mapping his body, wondering if there was a button hidden just below the surface that those fingers might accidentally press, turning on the feeling of love that he knew must be in there _somewhere_. He waited for the moment when his heart would tear at the seams from all the love contained therein, and maybe that love would burst right out of him in musical form, ala _Moulin Rouge_. He waited and waited and waited for a moment that never came.

But what if, for some people, there _was _no definitive moment? What if love didn't move in a dramatic linear fashion, with a start and end point and little tic marks along the way? What if, instead, love was just a gradual thing, a feeling that snuck up on you and took control when you least expected it, and sometimes stayed dormant for a little while before you even realized it was there? Memories began to flash through his mind, presenting itself like an impish flipbook, pages turning and flipping at a dizzying rate: him and Butters sitting on the bus, legs and arms and sides pressed against each other like they were a singular being; their first kiss in the school hallway and every other kiss after that, in a snowbank or on a couch or standing upright, lips mashing, noses bumping, hands roaming; the secret smiles and furtive glances that Butters had begun to send his way and Kenny would return, those little moments of connection that Kenny found himself looking forward to every day; the way Butters' springy voice undulated slightly when he whispered _'I love you' _against Kenny's skin, and the complete and utter bliss that had filled Kenny as a result, like nothing that he had ever experienced before. All these little scribbles and doodles and Picassos overlapped and came together to form one big picture, and that's when Kenny _just knew_:

He was totally, madly, insanely, ridiculously, crazily, ostentatiously, irrevocably head over heels in love with Butters.

And for some reason, Butters was totally, madly, insanely, ridiculously, crazily, ostentatiously, irrevocably head over heels in love with him, too! Perhaps minus a couple modifiers and plus a few synonyms, but the basic message was still intact. He loved Butters and Butters loved him.

Inner peace washed over Kenny immediately. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but at the same time, he didn't feel any differently for Butters than he had prior to this revelation. He hadn't fallen in love with Butters here, five seconds ago, at some run-down White Castle deep in the bowels of Hell. No; he had fallen in love with Butters over the course of their relationship, a culmination of one month's romantic involvement and several years' friendship. He just hadn't realized it until now. That love had been lying taciturnly inside him for quite some time – exactly how long, he couldn't be sure, and didn't really care – but it had been unidentified hitherto this moment. And now that it was correctly identified as love, Kenny's only thought was… _well, DUH_. There was a definite sentiment of _thank you, dear Lord Baby Jesus, _as well, but mostly he just felt retarded. He could've saved himself and Butters a whole lot of trouble if this Chef-instigated epiphany had happened sooner, but his life sure as hell wasn't scripted and if it was, then whoever wrote it had a sick sense of humor and was probably laughing his ass off right about now. Still, it was amazing to finally have a name attached to the feeling. _I love Butters_, Kenny thought, and then repeated that phrase over and over, placing emphasis on different parts. _**I **__love Butters. I __**love **__Butters. I love __**Butters**__._ It didn't lose its charm no matter how many times or ways Kenny said it, and he had a feeling that it would always be that stupidly wonderful the 500th time he said it as it was the first time. Although he'd only been consciously in it for approximately three minutes, love already seemed like a constant, something beautiful that would never grow lackluster. And okay, maybe that was a bit idealistic, but _fuck_ – for just once in his life, Kenny would like to be the most idealistic guy on Earth. Or in Hell, as it currently stood.

"Holy shit," Kenny breathed, for no real reason other than to show his companion that he wasn't catatonic. He placed both hands on the temples of his head, sliding fingers underneath his hood to ensnarl in thick, corn-yellow tufts. "…Fucking _wow_, dude."

Chef chuckled softly. "Yeah, I've felt that way before," he said. "You hold onto that feeling, Kenny. It's a good one. And you're lucky to have somebody that feels the same way. Most folks ain't got that in their life."

"Hell yeah, I am," Kenny agreed, sporting a lazy grin. Lucky – that was it. So, so very lucky, amongst a million other completely amazing feelings, some that were amazing just by definition and some that were amazing solely because they were brought into actuation by _Butters_. He wondered if Butters felt those same feelings about him. God, he hoped so. But even more than that, he wanted Butters to know that he felt these things, because they were too amazing _not _to share.

"I take it this means you haven't told 'im yet, huh?" Chef asked, jarring Kenny out of his reverie.

He nodded. "Well, only because I didn't know until… oh, a couple minutes ago." His grin turned sheepish, then became slightly marred by concern. "Fuck, I don't even know how I'm going to do it. This whole talking thing?" Kenny gestured to himself and shook his head slowly. "Yeah. Not really my thing. It's not like I'm shy or anything, it's just… he's so good at it, and I'm not, and he didn't even believe me when I told him I _liked _him, so how the hell is he going to believe that I _love _him?"

Chef fixed him with a hard, prolonged stare, and for a few terrifying seconds, Kenny was afraid that he would say something like 'he won't'. But instead, he leaned across the table and tapped one index finger against Kenny's chest. "If you feel it in here…," he began, and then moved the finger to press against the center of his forehead. "…Then he'll know it in here." With a reassuring smile, he leaned back into his own seat, gesticulating vaguely over one shoulder. "You just tell 'im what you told me earlier, and you've got it in the bag. You coulda won a goddamn Oscar with _that _performance!"

"Really?" Kenny parroted, blinking. "Weird. I wasn't really planning for all of that to come out. I didn't even think before I said it. It was like fucking word vomit, man."

"Well, it was great, whatever you children are callin' it these days," Chef said definitively, like this was the final word on the subject and he would accept no other opinion, period. As always, Kenny was more than willing to believe his former role model.

He was just about to say something in reply when a strange sensation in his chest momentarily distracted him. The usual feeling of effervescent lightness that filled his body while in Hell, something that could best be described as a lack of weight, was beginning to disappear. Life was slowly seeping back into him, bringing back the faded hangover pangs and pouring sand into his hollow limbs. Even as his insides were growing more solid, his outward appearance was becoming less and less substantial; when he glanced down at his hands, he was able to see the off-white surface of the table through them. This was supposed to be the part where Kenny freaked out, had the same thing not been happening to him since the first time he came to Hell. It was time to go home. There was no fighting it.

"Thanks, Chef," he murmured, allowing his eyes to drift shut as their surroundings indolently faded away: the rotting stench of undercooked meat mixed with Hell's personal cologne, the quiet drone of late-80s pop, the booth he was sitting on. All of it – gone.

He never got a reply. That was regrettable, but he couldn't feel too disappointed. With the way his life went, it was almost guaranteed that he'd see Chef again soon, and though he was leaving without a proper goodbye, he was also leaving with some priceless knowledge.

He was going to tell Butters that he loved him.


	17. Hands Down

**A/N: **Well, it's been a fun ride, guys, but... this is the last real chapter. There's only the epilogue after this (which I should have up sometime next week) and then it's done.

Thanks so much, all of you. I'll have a more detailed 'thank you' in the epilogue, but for now - just know that without your feedback, I probably never would've finished this.

Here it is. Enjoy, hopefully.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own South Park, "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel, "Hands Down" by Dashboard Confessional, Cameron Crowe's _Say Anything_, or any of the other pop culture properties I briefly reference, because whoa, I kind of do that a lot.

**Chapter 16**

For once, Eric Cartman was completely and truly happy with the way things were going.

Not to say that he's normally depressed or even unhappy; it's just that most of the time, his default mood is angry, and when he's angry, he takes all that anger out on everyone around him until his mood shifts to a sort of grim satisfaction. And he supposes 'grim satisfaction' can be classified as a positive emotion in a fucked up, sadomasochistic way, but the gratification he received from others' pain didn't even come close to what he was feeling right now. It was satisfaction, yes, but it was so much more than that. It was inner peace. It was comfort. It was adequacy. It was jubilation. It was… dare he say it… happiness? He felt like if he prescribed a name to it, the warm, fuzzy, everything-is-totally-awesome sensation would go away, and he most certainly did not want that to happen, so he wouldn't necessarily call it 'happiness'. All he'd say was that he felt pretty damn great and saintly and shitloads of other adjectives that described 'being of a generally good demeanor'. In fact, he had a feeling that if Kyle were to die a slow and excruciating death right before his eyes, a death that would involve much twitching, bleeding, and a verbal acquiescence to suck Cartman's balls in the afterlife, he wouldn't even crack a grin at the Jew's misfortune.

…Okay, so maybe he'd _grin_, but at least he wouldn't point and jeer "heh heh heh heh HEH heh, you ah-are _dyyyyying_" like he normally would. That had to be a step up, right? Right.

This sudden change in disposition was even more unusual because Cartman had every right to be annoyed at the moment. He was in the school gym, for one thing, and it was dark and sweat-drenched and throbbing with crappy pop music, a fact which seemed to go unnoticed by virtually everyone in the room besides him, since they were all busy dry-humping each other on the dance floor and avoiding Mr. Garrison with his cries of, "Keep it in your pants, will ya? Jesus Christ!" in between said dry humps. School dances were always lame, but this year's winter formal had reached a new level of suckitude that Cartman had previously thought unattainable. And on top of that, he was stuck wearing some lame outfit consisting of a blue button-down shirt, khaki pants and a tie, so he felt like a total douchebag, but Wendy had said he looked cute so he supposed it wasn't _too _awful. Still, he should be annoyed. He'd be tearing out his hair and kicking down the speakers and then proceed to spend the evening home alone, probably watching Terrance & Phillip reruns while keeping a bag of Doritos away from Mr. Kitty, if Wendy and Butters weren't at his side. But that was the thing: they _were _at his side, and for once, no one was pissed off at him. Well. Okay. Kyle was probably filled with unexplained Jewish rage toward him, but he was _always _filled with unexplained Jewish rage so he didn't count. The only person that would have a legitimate reason to still be pissed off at him was Kenny, actually, and Kenny wouldn't be pissed off much longer if everything went according to plan tonight. All in all, Cartman was pretty satisfied with his current social standing. Sure, he was potentially in the bad graces of _one _person, but Cartman had successfully perturbed entire nations of people so this didn't seem so bad in comparison.

Perhaps the strangest thing of all was not Cartman's pleasant behavior, but Wendy's. Cartman would be flat-out lying if he said that he hadn't been nervous about tonight; they were not 'official' yet, and this was shaping up to be his last shot at proving to Wendy that he was worth taking a chance on, which was a fuck-ton of pressure if you thought about it. _He _didn't think he deserved Wendy, so how the hell was he supposed to convince _her _that the opposite was true? Time went by and Cartman still was unable to answer that rather pressing question, and so he'd locked himself up in his bathroom and alternated between venting his frustrations to Clyde Frog and breathing into a paper bag, but that didn't really help at all – he'd just seen people do that when they were freaking out in the movies, and thought it was worth a try. As it turned out, all of his fretting and nail-biting and ranting had been for naught, because the moment Wendy stepped outside of her house and their arms linked together and she gave him this _look _that turned his stomach inside out, he knew it would all be okay. He couldn't really explain how, but he did. They were going to make this work.

And when they got in his car and talked on the way to the school, their conversation wasn't in the least bit awkward like he'd expected it to be. The radio had been humming quietly in the background when 'Poker Face' came on, and of course he had to brag about how he'd done the _awesomest _cover of this song ever back in 4th grade and the station really should be playing his version instead. This had led to much disbelief on Wendy's part, which in turn led to some playful banter about Cartman's singing skills, and then he'd regaled her with a detailed account of how he, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny had accidentally murdered Lady Gaga by leading her into a lion's den while bringing democracy to some third-world African country. ("'Ey, it was her own fault for wearing those freaky-ass meat suits all the goddamn time. Bitch was just _asking _for it!") Wendy had given him an obligatory lecture about contributing to the grisly death of a renowned pop star and why it was detrimental to their then-mission of world peace, but she was trying really hard not to laugh during its delivery – he could tell because the bridge of her nose crinkled a teensy bit – and the rest of the evening had passed by in a similarly lighthearted fashion, with Wendy's compliments towards him even outweighing her jaunty insults. That was new.

They had left the car a little over an hour ago and now found themselves sitting in the back of the gym, perched atop rows of bleachers with Cartman sandwiched quite comfortably between Wendy and Butters, too busy occupying themselves with being the 'kewl kids who sit in the back and just soak up each other's kewlness', as Cartman so eloquently put it, to get out there and dance. And he was totally okay with this. Dancing was weak, and would most certainly lead to embarrassment, an occurrence which had become routine ever since he had reunited Fingerbang in 8th grade for the sole purpose of serenading Wendy and ended up with a broken foot and Wendy's eternal chagrin, so he figured dancing was just karma's way of being a big fat bitch to him. He hated dancing. Wendy also hated dancing. Butters loved dancing, but Cartman theorized this was somehow connected to Butters' retarded homo-genes and decided that he was a lost cause from the start. The lack of cavorting didn't seem to affect Butters too much, though, if the way he'd been carrying on a friendly conversation with Wendy for the last freakin' 18 minutes was any indication of his current mood. And yeah, so maybe Cartman's fixation on this one little point made him sound jealous out of context. He wasn't jealous. What was there to be jealous of? Butters was so gay that he actually gagged when the word 'vagina' was uttered in his presence – a habit that Cartman gleefully made good use of in his never-ending quest to torment Butters – and the only other person who Wendy could possibly have feelings for was Token. And if the occasional lingering glances she sent Token's way were to be trusted, then yes, she _did _still have some residual feelings for him. Did this bother Cartman? You bet. Was he particularly concerned? Not really. Wendy was going out of her way to prove that she wanted Cartman, and for every time he caught her looking at Token, there were five affectionate smiles directed solely at him, so he liked to think the scales were being tipped in his favor. Plus, the end of her relationship with Token was quite recent and probably still pretty fresh in her mind. It was only natural for her to be somewhat conflicted. The important part was that although Wendy wasn't _completely _his yet, they were certainly on the path to being 'official' again, and if Cartman had to pinpoint one reason behind his startlingly good mood, it would be this knowledge.

However, things weren't quite perfect yet. Just because he was content with the night's progression thus far didn't mean there weren't aspects that couldn't be improved upon; the DJing could definitely use some work, for example, but he had no say in the musical choice and therefore saw no foreseeable improvement. But he supposed he could live with crappy pop and rap tunes for one night. What he _couldn't _live with was the conspicuous lack of physical contact between him and Wendy. He hadn't expected them to have a hot, crazy make-out sesh or anything – no matter how wicked sweet that would obviously be – but he'd envisaged something a little less docile than this, at the very least. They'd held hands for a very brief period of time and walked arm in arm awhile before that, and Wendy was sitting pretty fucking close to him right now, but they hadn't even kissed yet and Cartman kind of felt like he was in the friend zone. And if there was one place he most emphatically did NOT want to be, it was the friend zone. He began to jiggle his leg. A subtle motion at first, he slowly increased the pace and obviousness until the whole bench shook. Wendy stopped chatting with Butters long enough to look at him askance and then, immediately after, place a firm hand on his lower thigh, a few centimeters above his knee. Score! She had walked right into his clever trap to instigate physical contact, just as he'd predicted! Cartman flashed her an insouciant grin before obediently ceasing his movements. Leg-jiggling was one of Cartman's many habits that drove Wendy absolutely insane, and not in the sexy 'Girls Gone Wild' way, either. "If you shake your fucking leg _one more time_," she had once warned him through gritted teeth, "I will inject it with enough elephant tranquilizer to make sure it never moves again." Needless to say, Cartman hadn't dared to do it since then. Many years of involvement with Wendy Testaburger, alternately as friends, lovers, and rivals, had taught him that she was not one to make idle threats. If Wendy said she was going to pump him full of sedatives until he was immobilized, then she was damn well going to do just that.

This time, thankfully, she didn't appear to have any plans to maim him. In fact, she was even boasting a smile. It was tinged with mild exasperation, but on the whole, it was one of those 'you bug the shit out of me, yet I still kind of really like you' smiles that meant Wendy wasn't actually mad. Cartman stretched and furtively snaked one arm around Wendy's waist, half-turning to face Butters as he did so. "Ass master," he addressed the blond airily, "How about you be super awesome and fetch me and the woman some Mountain Deeewwww?"

Butters raised an inquisitive eyebrow (probably at Wendy's indignant scoff) and ran his hands along the tops of his black dress pants. He was dressed to the nines, a fact which Cartman took sole credit for. Though Cartman himself staunchly refused to wear anything more formal than what he currently had on, the two of them had gone shopping for tuxes anyway, with Butters bitching the whole time about how Kenny was the only person whose opinion on his appearance mattered and he didn't want to go through all the trouble of looking nice if Kenny wouldn't even be at the dance to see him – or so Butters thought – and Cartman had to shut him up by putting on a suit and initiating a good ol' fashioned game of Spies. And yes, they were both juniors in high school, and yes again, they were definitely speaking in phony British accents and shooting each other with finger-guns. What of it? The only thing Cartman saw wrong with this picture was that it was all just a bit too BFF-y for his tastes, but he'd made up for that by teasing Butters mercilessly the whole ride back. Cartman could safely (and heterosexually) say that Butters looked good, and he could only _imagine _Kenny's reaction when he finally showed up and saw his man candy figuratively wrapped up with a little bow on top… and he imagined. A lot. And cackled quietly to himself at the knowledge that Kenny was receiving the very same treatment from Stan and Kyle, and when Kenny and Butters were forced to speak face-to-face, they would stop being such goddamn pussies and Cartman would no longer have a massive guilt-headache. "Uh, w-well," Butters hedged, gaze roaming around the gym, "I'unno, Eric. The drinks are all the way over there, an' I'd hafta get through all those dancin' folks just to reach 'em."

Cartman's brow creased thoughtfully. "Hey. Hey, Butters… have you converted to veganism recently?" he asked.

Butters shot him a look that clearly said he was reconsidering Cartman's mental capacities. "…Um, nope. I still like eatin' meat just as much as I ever did. Why d'ya ask?"

It took all of Cartman's feeble self-restraint to not make a double entendre connecting Butters' sexuality with his apparent appetite for meat, because _oh my God_, this kid made it way too fucking easy to poke fun at him. He leaned in closer to Butters and feigned an expression of shock and concern. "Because you're covered in tiny vaginas, ya goddamn pussy!" he roared in the other boy's face.

Butters gagged. Predictable. "I ain't bein' a pussy, Eric, I'm bein' reasonable!" He gestured wildly at the mass of dancing teenagers below them. "If I go out there, I'm gonna get trampled! An' if I get trampled by our classmates in an outfit like this, my parents oughtta be –"

"BIG, BLOOD-BELCHING VAGINAS!" Cartman intoned passionately, feeling like one of those fire and brimstone preachers he sometimes saw on television at 3 AM. He extended a hand skyward. "PRAY-EEEZE THE LORD!"

Butters' shoulders convulsed with another gag as he scrambled away, practically tripping over his own two feet in his haste. "Alright, I'm goin', I'm goin'!" he said, unleashing a string of G-rated Southern expletives on the air around him before descending the bleachers.

"'Big, blood-belching vaginas'?" Wendy repeated sardonically once Butters was out of earshot. "Beautiful."

Cartman gave a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. "Does that turn you on?"

"You have no idea," Wendy replied, voice still deadpan despite the smirk poised on her lips – her full, glistening, beautiful lips. All of her was beautiful, to be quite honest. This wasn't a recent revelation. Cartman always thought Wendy was beautiful, no matter what she wore. Her allure was natural and effortless. She didn't have to change a single thing about herself to be pretty in his eyes, but on the few occasions she did, the results were always stellar.

He tore his gaze away from her lips, scowling. "Is it even _possible_ for you to say something that isn't completely sarcastic, ho?" he wondered.

"Not sure," she answered breezily. Cartman snorted. "It's my defense mechanism against your asininity, so you only have yourself to blame." She brushed a ringlet of chestnut hair away from his face, letting her touch linger there for a moment before pulling back. "I wasn't being sarcastic when I said you look really nice tonight, though. I mean it. You look great."

Cartman chuckled self-consciously and thumbed at his tie. "Heheh, yeah. I'm pretty awesome."

"Well, I don't know if I'd go _that _far," Wendy said, rolling her eyes, "but at least it doesn't look like you rolled out of bed and dressed yourself in the dark."

"What if I told you I did?" he challenged, quirking an eyebrow.

She smiled. "Then I'd be very impressed."

"In that case, I'm telling you I did," Cartman said with a confident grin. "Bitches don't know 'bout mah fashion sense." He popped his collar for added effect. "I mean, I even helped Butters pick out his tux, and he's the biggest fairy I know. That's gotta earn me some brownie points, right?"

"Of course it does," Wendy replied, and Cartman had the distinct notion that she was humoring him, but couldn't find it in himself to care. He liked when Wendy played along with his occasional wackiness, especially since she seemed to derive most of her pleasure from bursting Cartman's metaphorical bubble. It made everything all the more fun. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and crossed her legs primly, eyeing him with interest and maybe even some premature approval. "So I'm assuming this means you made up with Butters?"

Cartman nodded and propped his feet up on the row of bleachers just below them. He moved the well-buffed shoes back and forth idly, purple and green and red lights caught in its black leather. "You're an ass for assuming, but yeah. We kind of had a 'moment'." The words left his mouth before he could pause to consider their consequences, and his upper lip twitched in the beginnings of a sneer. "Shhh. Don't tell him I said that, or else I'll cut out your ovaries and then you'll never have the wonderful experience of carrying my children."

He waited for Wendy to slap him or make some snide remark about how he 'shouldn't count on it' or 'getting a little ahead of yourself, don't you think?', but he received neither. Instead, Wendy just rested her chin in her hand and fixed him with a measured stare, smiling faintly. "You've changed," she said, her voice neutral.

Cartman frowned and picked at a loose thread dangling from his tie. There it was – that all-too familiar feeling of withdrawal, of emotional seclusion, of layer after invisible layer being stacked atop his heart, a process set into motion by forces which Cartman didn't pretend to understand and didn't think he ever truly would. "Like hell I have. I'm still a complete fucking dick, I still hate Jews and hippies and gingers and basically every other group of people that exists just to piss me off, whateva, Ah do what Ah waunt," he grumbled bitterly. "I'm still the same old asshole, and all that weed smoke must've finally killed your few remaining brain cells if you think that's ever going to change."

"Well, that's partially true," Wendy conceded, undaunted by Cartman's sudden grumpiness. "Not the part about the weed smoke – jerkass – but everything else. You're still a dick, yes, and that'll probably never change, just like all the other personality traits that make up your oh so sunny disposition." She elbowed him gently, earning her a begrudged smile from Cartman. "I wouldn't say you've done a complete 180, but you've definitely matured. Be honest: a few years ago, would you have ever even _thought _about apologizing to Butters? With nothing in it for you except the possibility that you could be friends again?" He didn't say anything. It was answer enough. "It's not a bad thing, Eric. You're finally starting to mature. Like you said – you'll probably always be a bigoted, ruthless, manipulative, twisted asshole, because that's just who you are, but… I think you're starting to see what's really important. Maybe."

The purple and green and red lights glimmered in her eyes for a split second before she looked away, shoulders squaring and posture stiffening. He realized that she was trying to find the good in him. Wendy was a curious anomaly – she would always be the first person to call him out on his bullshit and put him in his place, yet she was also one of only two people (the other being Butters) who constantly sought out his better points and expounded upon them. He needed her. She didn't need him at all; not Wendy Testaburger, who tore through life like a one-woman army, clearing each obstacle that crossed her path in leaps and bounds. Wendy, who was perfectly capable of soaring high above Cartman, of crossing figurative mountains and valleys and oceans to reach greener pastures, but clipped her wings and stayed grounded with him out of something as capricious as love. Wendy, who still tried so hard to believe in him when everyone else had given up looking for that elusive silver lining to the cloud of his imbalances a long time ago. She didn't have to stay with him. She didn't have to keep looking for something worth believing in. But she did, and she was going to, and Cartman supposed the least he could do was make the process easier on her.

"I watched this show on Animal Planet a couple weeks ago when I was really bored," he remarked offhandedly. Wendy blinked at the non sequitur, but said nothing. "This was when everyone was pissed off at me, by the way. I felt like shit, and no one wanted to hang out with me, obviously, so I stayed home and watched whatever the fuck was on TV. It ended up being some show on Animal Planet, like I said. I don't know what it was called, but the host was some show-offy douchebag who kept following a snake around and poking it with a stick. So I kept watching, because this guy was a class-A dumbshit and I thought it would be really super hilarious to see the snake get pissed off and kill him. And you know what? He kept poking the snake, and poking it and poking it and the snake didn't do anything to him for a long-ass time, just kind of ignored him and hissed a little bit, like it was saying 'GTFO, dude', but it must've got fed up with the other guy's shit or something because then it turned around and bit the show-offy douchebag right on his douchey arm. And I laughed for awhile, 'cause it was funny, but then I realized something: the guy wasn't dying. He didn't piss and moan or cry or anything either, didn't even go after that snake and beat the crap out of it, just took his arm and started sucking the poison out. And when he was done, he still didn't complain. Then he started talking about how he shouldn't have been tormenting that snake so much, and I was like, 'well, I could've told you that 10 minutes ago, artard', but actually, it made me think." Cartman folded his arms behind his head and reclined, feeling Wendy's confused stare boring into him but refusing to acknowledge it. "When you keep poking and tormenting something that looks harmless, it's fun for awhile 'cause you just don't expect anything to happen. You poke it, it doesn't get hurt that bad, and you're having fun, so everybody wins. But then something changes. You poke it too hard, or it just gets fed up with you, whatever – eventually, it says 'screw you gahs, I'm going home' and it turns around to bite you on the ass, and then it's not fun anymore. Then you're just filled with poison. And after that, you can do one of two things: you can be stubborn and stupid and let yourself die, or you can suck out the poison." Amber lenses shifted as he finally glanced over at Wendy. She still looked fairly confused, but there was also a tenuous shadow of understanding in her expression, like she suspected that this was all some elaborate metaphor but didn't want to risk looking stupid by reading into it too much. Cartman smirked. "So when I apologized to you and Butters, that was kind of like me sucking out the poison. And it was hard, because politicians and golf players are really the only people who should ever have to apol-ah-gize, and I'm neither of those things, thank Jesus. But you know what's stupid? I never would've even had to do any of that pussy crap if I had just stopped fucking with you and Butters so much."

A slow, knowing smile crept across Wendy's face. "I'm proud of you," she said sincerely, reaching out to cup his cheek. It was one of those moments where Cartman had to relish every little component: the touch of her dainty, feminine fingers… the complete openness of her smile, unburdened by any hint of malice… but most of all, the fact that she, Wendy, was actually _proud _of _him_, Cartman. No one was ever proud of him, solely because he never did anything worthy of pride. He destroyed things. He smashed lives and the people who occupied them to tiny bits and pieces, infinitesimal, unsalvageable, and he did it over and over again without any intention to fix the things he had broken. There was nothing to be proud of in any of this. But for once, he'd changed his methodology. His destructive tendencies had run amok once again, breaking the most important relationships in his life to an almost irreparable point, and that was a pattern which had previously been so interwoven into the fabric of his being that he'd never bothered to rip out the sutures… until now. This time, he _did _fix the things he had broken. And maybe that was what maturing was really about: making mistakes and learning from them, no matter how much trial and error it took to get there. If that was truly what it meant to be mature, then maybe he _was _finally maturing. And if maturing was part of change, then yes, maybe he was starting to change, too. To what extent would he change? Not much, he imagined. It wasn't that he didn't want to change; it was more like he didn't know _how _to change. At 9 years old, Eric was already far more set in his ways than people who were several decades older than him, and this unfortunate fact had changed very little by the time his teenage years rolled around. For the most part, he doubted that anything would ever be able to alter his personality and all those quirks and inconsistencies and just plain _ugliness _that had ingrained itself in him so deeply. But maybe this wasn't a death sentence. Wendy seemed to accept him just fine for whom he was now, and maybe some time in the future, whether that be a day or a year or even several decades from this moment, he could finally be the man that she deserved. Hesitantly, he slid his thick fingers between the spaces in Wendy's hand, interlocking them with a tiny smile. It felt natural.

"Mountain Dew Code Red," Wendy said, abruptly.

Cartman blinked. "…The fuck are you talking about? Oh, wait. Is this some ultra secret women-speak relationship crap? 'Cause I'm not fluent."

"No. I don't pull out any of my 'women-speak' around you because I don't want to confuse your sexist little brain, _dear_," she replied, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "Anyways. Mountain Dew Code Red. That's your favorite drink, right?"

"Hell yes. It's like a party in my mouth." The hand that wasn't entwined with Wendy's scratched behind his ear, while both eyebrows arched expectantly. "Why?"

"Remember how, on Christmas Eve, you were saying some of the things you remembered about me?" she prefaced. Cartman nodded. "Well, I didn't want you to think that I don't remember things about you. Because I do. A lot, actually. I just couldn't say it at the time. But then you told Butters to get us some Mountain Dew, and it reminded me of that, so. Yeah."

A rare warmth flooded Cartman's insides, one that he wasn't familiar with and couldn't quite describe. Had he been someone with more emotional intelligence, he would've instantly recognized it as the feeling of being really and truly wanted, but Cartman had never possessed much experience in that category and therefore was unable to identify it. Though it was similar to the pseudo-happy everything-is-awesome feeling that had previously occupied him, it was also markedly different. Better. More Wendy-ish. "My favorite drink," he said, the words hanging thick on his tongue, like molasses. He chuckled. "So random. Why the hell did I tell you that, anyway?"

"You didn't," Wendy replied. "Well, not explicitly, anyways. You were, um, quote-unquote 'sick' one day when we were still dating, and you called me up during class to whine about your stomach and ask me to bring you some pop." She absently raked two fingers through the curtain of black hair that veiled the side of her face. "So I decided to skip class and go to your house, but I stopped at home on the way to pick up some pop for you. All we had was a two liter of Mountain Dew Code Red – I'm not sure why, because I'd never drank it before – so I just thought 'to hell with it, if he's unappreciative, at least I can use the bottle to smack him around a bit', but you ended up really liking it so that never panned out. Unfortunately."

Cartman's face cracked in a gleeful grin. "Abusive skank. I bet you think you're _soooo _smart right now, huh? Well, well, well, I'll be the judge of that, mmhm. So… you could tell I liked it, which isn't that impressive 'cause I like most carbonated beverages, but you also knew that it was like my favoritest thing in the world. That's very intriguing." Shoe soles clanked together as he crossed his legs at the ankles, leaning in toward Wendy with an excessive amount of eyelash-batting. "Please, tell me more."

"My methods were quite simple, actually," Wendy said, tilting her chin upwards superiorly. "Normally, when you just _like _something, you chug it and then it's pretty much gone in a minute. When you _really _like something, though, you kind of indulge in it and make it last for awhile. That's what you did with the Mountain Dew. It's… sort of cute, actually. And you drank it every date we went on after that, so I thought that had to count for something." Her lips curved in a wry smile. "It's amazing what you can learn when you open your mind and pay attention. You should try it sometime."

Cartman pantomimed rubbing his chin thoughtfully, a cogitative hum rumbling low in his throat. "Open my mind and pay attention, or remain blissfully ignorant? Open mind, blissful ignorance? Which one do I chooooose?" he lamented. Wendy glared at him flatly, which Cartman disregarded in favor of another moment of mock-contemplation, culminating in a decisive click of the tongue. "…Yeah, no, I think I'm gonna stay ignorant. Way more fun." The cheeky smirk he gave Wendy earned a less than warm reception at first, but gradually, her annoyance crumbled and she was once again boasting that 'you bug the shit out of me, yet I still kind of really like you' expression that he loved so much. He held her gaze for a few more seconds before glancing down, watching as the tip of a finger encircled one of the pearl white buttons on his immaculately clean shirt. It was difficult to force out what he said next – the starched collar felt too tight around his neck and the words refused to budge therein – but they found their way out nonetheless, clumsy and uncoordinated. "Why did you do it?" he asked.

Wendy blinked. "Hm?"

"Skip school to see me, I mean," Cartman clarified, squeezing the button between his fingers like he could make it shatter through sheer force of apathy. "The only time you've ever broken the rules 'cause of me was when you wanted to fight on the playground, y'know, in 4th grade. But there was something in it for you that time, even if you were probably pissing your panties 'cause you knew I was totally gonna kick you square in the cooter… When we were dating, though, there was no reward or anything in it for you. So why'd you do it?"

"You really can't be this dense," Wendy said, frowning. "Of course there was something in it for me. I was in love with you. Seeing you _was _a reward, believe it or not."

Cartman's jaw dropped disbelievingly. It was cliché, he knew it, but he really could not believe his own two ears. Wendy had been in love with him? The same Wendy that had dumped him and then dodged all of his subsequent advances in the four years that followed? He took those four years' worth of facts and carefully calculated inferences, all of which pointed to the conclusion that _he _had been the amorous one and Wendy ultimately did not return his feelings, and then tried to reconcile them with Wendy's recent allegation. They didn't fit. No matter how much he twisted them, bent them, reinterpreted them, none of it made sense when put together. But maybe it wasn't supposed to. Cartman prided himself on being able to figure people out, to metaphorically pick apart their brains and access all their demons and innermost workings, but Wendy had always been an enigma to him. There was a barrier around her mind that Cartman had never been able to breach, possibly because she was every bit as cunning and manipulative and guarded as he was. Over time, he'd found cracks in the wall – little idiosyncrasies, habits, and ways of thinking that were distinctively Wendy – but he doubted he would ever completely understand her. Cartman rested his large hands atop his thighs, fingers curling into the stiff material as if that could somehow soften the inevitable blow of the answer to his next question. "Are you… do you… um. Yeah. Do you feel that way for me now?" he asked, silently willing his heart to shut up.

Wendy stared at him for such a length of time that it was almost excruciating. Then she lowered her gaze meekly. "I never stopped," she admitted.

That was the closest to an oral compliance that Cartman would get out of her, at least for now. Still feeling uncharacteristically diffident, he scooted nearer to her, the heels of his shoes scraping against the corrugated aluminum of the bleachers. At the sound, her eyes snapped up to meet his, brown lenses quivering for the briefest of moments before disappearing behind her lids, and that's when it hit Cartman: _this was actually happening_. He was finally – _finally_ – going to get the one thing he'd pined after for so fucking long, and that revelation alone was almost enough to shut down all his senses completely. But it didn't. As he moved in, he made sure every little detail was seared into memory: the scent of her perfume, sweet and palatable yet understated; the feel of her skin, soft and smooth against the curve of his palm, free hand brushing across the purple silk covering her lower back; the light pressure on his mouth when at last their lips came together, and, perhaps most pertinently, the taste. Oh _God_, the taste. Wendy would always taste like quadruple-stuffed Oreos to Cartman, quadruple-stuffed Oreos and clumsy kisses and euphoria and first love and wanting someone and feeling like you were wanted back, too, because that's just what Wendy was to him. She was that moment in the library with nothing but stack upon stack of books for company, the musty air filled with awkward laughter and accidentally synchronized sentences, the crumbs of Oreos gluing their hands together and the bumbling retraction that followed. She was that first kiss at the flag debate, the collective intake of air from the crowd as their lips collided, the inept youthful passion evident in every rigid angle and closed-mouthed movement. She was that day he spent lolling about on the couch with illness permeating in every sore and aching joint as he waited for her, the cool touch of her hand against his sweltering forehead, the jolting instant when he looked up at her and realized _I love Wendy _through the fog of convalescence that addled his brain and it was like his whole world was demolished and then rebuilt in a split second. She was all of those moments and she was this moment and she was hopefully going to be every moment after this, if he was lucky.

That's why, when they finally pulled apart, he grinned the most sincere grin he'd ever allowed to grace his features and said with an equal amount of sincerity, "I'm really, _really _happy right now."

"Me too," she confessed, and they both laughed for no reason whatsoever, breathless and relieved and happy, so, _so _fucking _happy_.

And for once, they completely and truly meant it.

* * *

"Why am I going to the dance, again?"

The question echoed dully off the walls of Stan Marsh's cramped closet as Kenny dressed himself, pile upon pile of unwashed t-shirts swimming around his feet and the light bulb above giving an ominous flicker. When no answer was immediately supplied, Kenny frowned and went about adjusting the lapels of his tuxedo, trying really hard not to linger on all the strange people that had previously occupied Stan's closet: Tom Cruise, R. Kelly, John Travolta… and apparently even Stan himself, considering he and Kyle had recently come out as a 'couple' (air quotes courtesy of Kyle) after a period of emotional turmoil resulting from having to return Gorak to his rightful owner and creator, Dr. Mephesto. Apparently, the experience had bonded them and shown just how well they worked together, reiterating what they had long known deep down from the egg-raising assignment in 4th grade or some shit like that. Kenny stopped paying attention around the part where Kyle's green eyes took on a distinct sheen, one which could only mean that he was about to launch into a long-winded story involving Stan and his magical and glorious cock. Or whatever the hell Kyle usually said about Stan. Kenny was damn good at listening when he wanted to, but that was just it: he didn't _want _to hear about his friends' weird-ass sci-fi soap opera romance. Partially because he really didn't give a fuck – those two had always had one foot in the rainbow door of Homoland, anyway – and partially because it reminded him too much of the gaping lack of a relationship in _his _life.

He had tried to rectify his problems with Butters. Honestly. Every day, he woke up, reminded himself that he was in love with Butters and Butters was in love with him, let the warm fuzzies fill him for awhile, then went to school determined to tell Butters of these warm fuzzies… but he never did. Fear of rejection was not a problem; his affection was returned, and even if Butters was still upset with him, he was confident in Chef's advice that Butters would recognize said affection and how honest Kenny was about it. Nerves weren't a problem, either. Well. Actually, they were _kind of _a problem, because hell if Kenny knew how to compose a romantic confession, but he'd worked through all those feelings and love-retardation until he had them somewhat sorted out. _How _he was going to tell Butters about his feelings was not the problem. No. _When _he was going to tell Butters – _that_ was the problem. There was just… never a right time. He doubted that a spontaneous declaration in the middle of Gym or Government would go down very well, and Butters was still being dodgy and nervous and avoiding him, so that ruled out a more private, face-to-face moment like he wanted. And, yeah, okay, he'd admit it: he wanted everything about it to be perfect. Which was strange, because Kenny was pretty much the furthest thing from a perfectionist. He was an easygoing guy who half-assed his schoolwork, thought about sex a lot, and liked to chill with his friends when he wasn't saving the world or balancing his precarious mortality. That was him in a nutshell. But those things didn't necessarily apply to Butters. He wanted to be a perfectionist for him, because Butters didn't deserve anything half-assed. Butters deserved only the best, and God-fucking-dammit, Kenny was going to give him the best of the best if he had any say in it. He had planned on going into "anal retentive Cartman mode" this weekend and using what intelligence he had to brainstorm the perfect moment for an epic love confession, but that idea had gone down the drain as soon as Kyle and Stan appeared on his cinder-block doorstep like a couple of gay wondertwins to loan him a spare tux and get him ready for the dance, which led him to his current position: as another unwilling occupant of Stan's closet, dressed in some stupid tuxedo for some stupid winter formal, when he _should _be figuring out a way to get back together with Butters. Kenny's frown deepened and he rapped one fist against the closet door impatiently. "Fuckin' A, you guys," he lamented, "I know it's hard to talk with your tongues down each other's throats, but do you think you could stop playing tonsil hockey long enough to answer me?"

"Nope," came Stan's swift and insolent reply.

Kenny rolled his eyes. "Asshole," he muttered, then thought better of it and added louder, "You're an ass, Stan!"

"Basically, yeah, he is," Kyle agreed. There was a smattering of defensive mutters followed by a chuckle on the other end – fuck, Kenny could even picture the exchange like it was happening right before his eyes, which probably meant that he knew these guys way too well for his own good – and then Kyle cleared his throat imperiously. "Stan's wallowing in self-pity right now, so I'll answer. You're going to the dance because you need to have some fun, dude. It's as simple as that. We know this whole thing with you and Butters has been… tough, to say the least… but it's weird seeing you so upset and, well, we thought we should do something to help."

The words seeped through the closet door and although Kenny could hear them clearly, he couldn't help but wonder if they were a figment of his imagination. Stan and Kyle were legitimately concerned for him? He supposed he shouldn't be too surprised; Stan and Kyle were just naturally caring people. They showed concern not only for him, but for complete and total strangers, on a semi-regular basis. Caring was all they knew how to do, really. But their concern for Kenny tended to manifest itself at certain times: when he was stoned or drunk, usually, and when his happiness (or lack thereof) directly affected their own. Kenny's love life was something they rarely acknowledged, let alone showed concern for. It was a combination of curiosity and gratification that led Kenny to put on the rest of his ensemble and crack open the door, one wide, dark blue eye training its gaze upon the two boys waiting for him. "You know, if you really wanted to cheer me up, you could've just bought me some beer and porn. Way fucking cheaper," he said, even though it wasn't what he wanted to say.

As usual, it was Stan who saw straight through his bullshit. "Sure," he conceded amiably, "But… do you think it would've really helped? In the long run, I mean."

Being forced into attending some lame social gathering didn't sound like a long-term _or _short-term solution to Kenny's problem, but he kept the thought to himself. Stan and Kyle were just trying to help. Granted, they were trying to help in their clumsy, we-actually-don't-really-understand-Kenny-_that_-much way, but they were trying to help nonetheless and for that, Kenny was thankful. He rolled one shoulder in a judicious shrug, then remembered that nonverbal responses didn't exactly translate well through doors and spoke his mind instead. "…Not really."

There was no reply. Huffing out a small sigh of resignation, Kenny smoothed out his silken tie and opened the door the rest of the way, half-expecting some snide remark about 'coming out of the closet'.

"Staaaaaaan… STAAAAAAHHHHN!"

Three heads, one blonde, one red, and one brunette all snapped up and swiveled toward the entrance to Stan's bedroom. At the sound of Randy's voice, Stan pinched the bridge of his nose and closed both eyes in exasperation. "Goddammit, my Dad's being an artard again," he complained. "Gimme a sec." Once this momentary flare-up of annoyance had cooled, his expression changed to one of fondness as he leaned down to plant a swift kiss on Kyle's cheek, whispering something in the other boy's ear before he reluctantly shuffled out of the bedroom. Kenny simply blinked. Stan had just been openly affectionate with Kyle? The same Stan that had avoided even the smallest physical acknowledgment from Kyle the week before? He must have taken Kenny's advice to heart, a feat which made Kenny practically burst with pride. Stan and Kyle and Cartman and Wendy had finally gotten their shit together. If only he could say the same thing about him and Butters…

Kenny shook his head decisively. He could worry about mending his and Butters' relationship later – for now, he was going to put aside his own problems and be happy that his friends had fixed their own. And because Kenny had, in reality, not matured one bit, 'being happy for his friends' equaled a rather obnoxious incantation of "_Stan and Kyyyyyyle sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G_!"

A dark blue pillow hit Kenny square in the chest, doing nothing to diminish his laughter nor Kyle's restrained chuckles. "Wow, way to be mature," the Jew remarked, rolling his eyes in a manner that contrasted sharply with the rest of his expression, which was marred by a near-invisible blush.

"Hey, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em," Kenny drawled, grinning lazily. He hooked two thumbs in the loops of his belt and strode over, sitting down next to Kyle in the space previously occupied by Stan. "So… when did you two decide to trade sucking dick for sucking face?"

"Just a few days ago, actually," Kyle admitted, flopping back onto Stan's mattress and folding both arms behind his head. "Stan was pissing me off and I was really close to just ending what we had, because I didn't want a friendship like ours to be ruined by something as… um… meaningless, I guess, as sex. No offense, Kenny."

The aforementioned stopped himself short of an obnoxious eye roll. God_damn_, people acted like they were afraid that Kenny would cut off their balls if they didn't agree with him on the awesomeness of sex. Yes, sex was great, and Kenny loved sex, but he could live without it, and had done so for a couple months now. Not that Stan and Kyle or anyone else besides Butters knew this. "None taken, man," Kenny said. "Anyways, go on."

Kyle nodded, as if confirming something in his mind. "So… I gave him this ultimatum. I told him that we could either go back to being best friends or we could be something more than that, but I was _not_, under any circumstances,going to continue being his hook-up. Stan chose the second option, and we've been going out ever since." A wan smile hovered on his lips. "…I'm really liking it. A lot. And the best part is, we both decided that if this whole 'dating' thing doesn't work out for whatever reason, we'll just revert to best friendship and forget it ever happened. I'm really, really hoping it works out, but. You know. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, because we've been through so much together already and we trust each other enough to work things out."

Kenny was silent for a long time after that, choosing to stare up at the rotating blades of the ceiling fan rather than speak. "I wish me and Butters had something like that," he said at last, the words coming out much quieter, more vulnerable, than he'd intended.

Kyle rolled onto his side, propping himself up on an elbow. "What do you mean? You two got along really well, from what _I _could see, anyways."

"No, no, we did," Kenny hurriedly clarified. "We got along fucking _great_. But… what you said about the whole trust thing… me and Butters?" He shook his head. "We don't have that. Not anymore, at least. I could trust that kid with my life – hell, I _still _do – and I think Butters trusted me a lot, too, but that was before he found out why I first started dating him. Now he doesn't trust me at all." The soft whir of the ceiling fan cut through the silence like a knife. "And that sucks enough as it is, but when you add on the fact that I'm in love with him and he doesn't even think I _like _him… fuck, it's pretty much the shit-coated cherry on a huge shit cake."

Kyle's emerald eyes widened to an almost comical extent. "You're in love with Butters?" he repeated, obviously surprised, then whispered to himself, "Looks like fatass was right after all…"

'_Looks like fatass was right after all...?' _Kenny arched a blond eyebrow at that, but didn't comment otherwise. Instead, he kept his gaze turned skyward, thinking of Butters and letting that warm fuzzy feeling coat his insides for the hundredth time since he'd first felt it. "Yeah, I do," he confessed, smiling softly. "God, Kyle. I love him so fucking much."

Kyle continued to watch him for a moment, scrutinizing, processing, because Kyle was _always _processing, and then he fell back on the bed once more. "Shit, dude," he said.

Kenny nodded. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that he was in Butters' bedroom. "Exactly."

* * *

After a long-winded, incredibly overdramatic confrontation between Randy and Stan, the likes of which that could only be seen in the Marsh household on a Saturday night, the three boys finally arrived at the dance in Kyle's minivan ("For the last time, it's my _Mom's _minivan, okay? Jesus Christ!"). The event had been plodding along for a steady hour and a half before their ingress. By Kyle's definition, this constituted 'fashionably late'. By Stan's definition, this added up to a casual shrug that seemed to express a sentiment of 'what can you do?'. By Kenny's definition, this was a blessing in disguise. The less time spent at WinterFest, the more time spent plotting that perfect moment between him and Butters, and that would hopefully lead to more moments spent doing things he actually cared about with the person he loved. Yet in spite of all Kenny's antipathy and absentmindedness, he at least tried to act somewhat upbeat for Stan and Kyle's sake. He made all his usual perverted jabs, swore like a particularly lecherous sailor, and even plastered on his trademark 'Kenny grin', the one Butters had once hailed as "my most favorite look on anyone I-I've ever seen", but it was like filling out some contractual obligation to be the person everyone expected him to be. No matter how nonsensical it may seem, Kenny did not _feel _like Kenny McCormick. At the most, he felt like someone impersonating Kenny McCormick, someone who rattled off innuendo after innuendo like it was the fucking alphabet and behaved in a manner that was rude enough to be shocking yet with the right amount of suave assuredness to find charming, but his heart wasn't into it. It hadn't been 'into it' since everything went to hell in a ham basket with Butters, actually. Still, he didn't let it show. He acted like his friends' perception of Kenny McCormick, talked like his friends' perception of Kenny McCormick, and though he definitely looked different due to his lack of an orange coat, he easily fulfilled the quota of 'Kenny-ness' to such a degree that even _he_ began to believe that he was actually having fun.

Until they stepped inside the gym and Kenny's gaze immediately fell upon Butters, that is.

Before he even got a good look at the boy, Kenny was turning around so fast he almost ran smack-dab into Stan and Kyle, all plans to 'keep cool' now completely forgone. "You didn't tell me Butters would be here," he hissed at Kyle through gritted teeth, grabbing the front of his tux and giving it a good yank.

"Whoa, hey, calm down," said Stan, ever the pacifist, as he gently disentangled Kenny's whitening fingers from the Jew's lapels. "You never asked if Butters would be here, Ken."

Kenny opened his mouth to protest, but he was only able to squeeze out one weak syllable before it died on his lips. While it was true that he'd never bothered asking about whether Butters would be attending the dance – he'd just assumed Butters would be absent, considering Butters didn't have a date that Kenny knew of – he definitely classified the fact that he and his ex-boyfriend would be present at the same social gathering as 'need-to-know' information. With one last defiant glare at his close friends, he slowly rotated around to face Butters' general direction, mentally preparing himself for whatever was about to happen next. But no amount of preparation in the world could've readied him for the moment when his eyes drank in Butters and his heart literally _stopped beating _in his chest, and it was barely even there, just like when the needle of a record player hit a scratch and skipped forward a second or two, but it was still _there _and it was immense and it almost knocked Kenny right off his feet. He'd seen Butters before, of course. He saw him every day: in class, in the hallways, on the other side of the lunchroom, but now, for reasons unknown to Kenny, it was like he was really _seeing _him for the first time ever.

Butters was gorgeous. He was always gorgeous to Kenny, always beautiful in that awkward, childish, hesitantly enthusiastic Butters-y sort of way, but _God_. Tonight, he had reached levels of attraction that Kenny had previously thought unattainable. Kenny had been wondering where his libido ran off to over the course of the last couple weeks, and, well. Here it was. Here it was, present in every angle and curve of Butters' slight body as he sat with his back almost ramrod straight on the bleachers, in the folds of black fabric that clung to those angles and curves, in the tresses of short blond hair that grazed the top of his forehead and temples, in the way his ice blue eyes drew Kenny's in from across the room, in everything that Butters was, both inside and outside. Kenny kind of wanted to take Butters out back and show him just how he was making his body feel right about now, honestly, but Kenny wouldn't do that even if he could. Butters deserved to be treated like a king. He deserved to have all of Kenny and have him at the right time, with Kenny's mouth moving softly against his, soft, oh so soft, and the rest of his movements would be the same, from the pads of Kenny's fingers trailing down the slope of his back to the gentle rolling of his hips, and their bodies would come together perfectly and just _fit_, because they fit like all the dips and junctions and missing pieces of their bodies and souls were designed specifically to be filled by each other. Butters filled him and made him happy and Kenny didn't know if such a thing was possible, but he felt like he was fucking falling in love all over again. It was ridiculous. They were both in love and Kenny was closer to Butters than he'd ever been but in this moment, at the same time, he felt like Butters was far away from him, in sight but dangling just out of reach. And now Kenny was being faced with a very abrupt, very sudden opportunity to abridge this gap once and for all, and all of it was too great and too frightening for him to properly wrap his head around. "Is it possible to barf and get a boner at the same time?" he wondered around the dopey grin animating his mouth, because yeah, it was starting to look really probable.

"Well, Kenneth, considering that barfing and bonering are controlled by entirely separate parts of the human body and therefore don't affect one another… I'd say yes, it _is _possible."

The dopey grin sobered up immediately when Cartman's distinct voice rasped against Kenny's ears. He whirled around in time to see the larger boy falling into step beside Stan and Kyle, characteristic smug smirk firmly in place as he shoved both hands into the pockets of his slacks. "Did _you _know Butters was going to be here?" Kenny demanded, freaking out just a little bit because uh, _Cartman_, and if Cartman was involved, this couldn't be good.

A contemptuous scoff rumbled low in Cartman's throat. "Pfft. Duh. I was the one who brought him here, Sherlock."

Kenny raked a hand through his unkempt blond hair, mussing it even further. Okay. He was okay. He was most definitely _not _freaking out right now, because there was most definitely nothing to be freaking out over. Butters was here, and he was here, too, and he kind of felt like one of those crazy preteen girls he saw at that Jonas Brothers concert he was forced to attend, the ones that screamed until they passed out in a pool of soda pop and vomit and other gross bodily fluids, but he could deal with this. "Um," Kenny hedged, because intelligent speech was just not his forte right now, apparently. "Why did you bring him?"

"I've been asking myself that question all night," Cartman muttered solemnly. "Butters is the world's biggest wet blanket without you around. I mean, I've always thought he was annoying as fuck, but now it's like… so weak that I can't even deal with it anymore. Which is why _you're _here: because you're almost as big of a wet blanket as Butters, and I have this theory that if you two got together again, the heat of your faggy homo-love would dry up your combined wet-blanketness and then you could go back to singing show tunes and pouring rainbow sprinkles all over each other, or whatever the hell gay people normally do."

"I think what lardbutt over there is trying to say," Kyle added from where he stood with Stan's arm subtly looped around his waist, "is that you and Butters have been pussyfooting around each other for long enough, and since neither of you are willing to take that first step…" He shrugged. "Well, we thought we should give you guys a shove in the right direction."

Kenny let his gaze travel from Stan to Kyle and Kyle to Cartman and back again until one thing became abundantly clear: they were in cahoots. Someone – whom, specifically, did not matter – or maybe even all of them simultaneously, had read into his and Butters' recent actions and decided to force a resolution since they couldn't seem to get their crap together by themselves. Stan and Kyle had brought him without telling him of Butters' presence, and Cartman had brought Butters, also probably without letting him know that Kenny would be here. They did this to make it a surprise, it seemed. And there wouldn't be a surprise unless they had one planned. And the only surprise Kenny could think of that would result in him and Butters getting back together was if they were going to instigate the confession that he had been angsting over for days, that 'perfect moment', right here, right now, tonight.

Oh, _shit_.

That crazy-preteen-girl-at-a-Jonas-Brothers-concert feeling swelled up in him again, but he soon quashed it. This wasn't a bad thing, he told himself, but rather a good thing. No, not just good – it was damn near convenient. The main thing that had been preventing a confession (besides Kenny's insistence on flawlessness) was Butters' avoidance of him. But now, they were in the same building and Butters couldn't avoid Kenny if he didn't know Kenny was there, so Kenny could pop in on Butters and take him to a more secluded place for a heart-to-heart, maybe in one of the empty classrooms, before Butters even had a chance to evade him. He wasn't prepared for this, but he could do it. He was finally going to get this over with. "Thanks, you guys," Kenny said, sporting a sincere grin now. "I'll just go get Butters and –"

One of Cartman's large hands shot out to clamp down on his shoulder, keeping him rooted firmly in place. "Oh no, you don't," he admonished. "I have a plan, okay? A really awesome, kick-ass plan, and you're going to follow that plan because I'm sacrificing part of my evening with my really cool girlfriend just to get you back on Butters' dick, goddammit."

"A plan?" Kenny repeated, eyes widening. "Fuck…"

Cartman, as usual, did not appear discouraged by the unwillingness of others. "Yes, a plan. Sprechen sie English, motherfucker? Christ on a stick. Look – I just got done knocking out the DJ and tossing him in the locker room, so the floor is open and ready for you to verbally projectile vomit your love for Butters over the microphone."

"Wait – _what_? Why would I do that?" Kenny yelped. The tentative confidence that had filled him just moments earlier was already gone, shattered into millions of tiny fragments. Letting Butters know how he felt was one thing, but sharing something like that with a large portion of the student body at the same time? That was completely, totally, 100% different, and completely, totally, 100% _not _okay.

"Kenneth," Cartman said, treating these next words with dead seriousness, "I spent the whole weekend watching what are commonly considered to be the greatest high school movies ever made. If you're a teenager trying to win back your love interest, you gotta make a big, sweeping public gesture of affection, alright? God, you gahs are so lucky to be friends with someone as genre-savvy as me."

"But this is real life, dipshit!" Kenny sputtered, gesturing frantically now. "We're not in a high school movie!"

Cartman rubbed his chin thoughtfully and glanced in the direction of what Kenny could only assume to be imaginary cameras. "Or are we?" he posited, raising an eyebrow for dramatic effect.

An innocuous stare was Kenny's only response to this question. Then, "Okay. So, let's just pretend for a minute that I don't think this idea is really fucking dumb and I agree to do it. What makes you think I _can _do it, anyway?" No reply. "I hardly even fucking said anything for the first 12 years of my life. That doesn't exactly give a guy public speaking skills, you know."

"True, very true," Cartman agreed. "And that's exactly _why _you need to do this."

Kenny tilted his head to the side. "I… huh?"

"No, see, in all those movies I watched, the hero couldn't get what he wanted until he made some big sacrifice," Cartman explained, adopting a tone of knowing, "or until he overcame his major flaw. Which, in your case, means getting over whatever's making you retarded at communicating, and you _will _get over it because you're doing it for Butters, and Butters will totally see what you're willing to do for him and that'll make everything way more meaningful. You would do pretty much anything to get back together with him, right?"

Kenny nodded slowly. "Well, yeah, pretty much. But –"

"Then get out there and do it." Cartman gave Kenny an encouraging pat on the shoulder, then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "The world is full of guys, Kenny. Be a man. Don't be a guy."

His stomach roiling with apprehension, Kenny glanced back at Butters over his shoulder once more, taking in all the angles and curves and black fabric and hair and light, light blue eyes, light blue eyes which suddenly shifted and locked with his from across the room, and it was as if everything just clicked into place. A fond smile crept over Kenny's face and it only widened when, after a moment of hesitance, a similar smile illuminated Butters' features. Kenny didn't know much about a lot of things, but he knew with every fiber of his being that Butters only smiled like that for him. There was something about the slight inward curve of his eyebrows, those glimmering pupils partially obscured by half-mast lids, the way the corners of his mouth seemed to soften, that turned Kenny's insides into mush and made him feel like he was the luckiest guy on the planet for being the receiver of such a smile from someone as great as Butters. Because Butters truly was great – Butters gave his all for Kenny, day in and day out, being patient enough to love Kenny for several years and never ask for or expect anything in return. He had given everything over and over and if their roles were reversed, Kenny realized that Butters would give him this, too, and put it all on the line if it meant getting him back, no matter how difficult it might be. And if anything could prove how serious he was about his feelings for Butters, it was this. Kenny smiled at Butters a moment longer before facing Cartman again, dipping his head in a decisive nod. "I'll do it."

What followed was mostly a blur: Cartman was yanking him by the hem of his tux, he was being practically dragged to the front of the gym, the music came to a brusque halt, a microphone was shoved into his hands, people were finally starting to wonder _what the hell? _and turn to face the source of disruption – aka, him – and fuck, why were there so many fucking people? It was moments like this when Kenny wished he'd never taken off his stupid parka at all and he could just tighten his hood and hide away from the rest of the world, because life was so much easier when no one knew what you were saying, a fact which he had never fully appreciated until this very moment. And now that he knew there was nothing to muffle his voice, that everyone could hear every word of what he was about to say… well, it was scary. It was scarier than going limp on a railroad track and being helpless to do anything other than watch as a train bore down on you. It was scarier than facing the Dark Lord Cthulhu with only a shotgun, a dagger, and all 4 feet and 70 pounds of your body to fight with. It was possibly scarier than anything he'd ever faced and it was definitely different than anything he'd ever experienced and he just didn't know how to _deal _with it. But he would deal with it. Somehow, some way, he was going to do this, because there was a part of him that knew this was the 'perfect moment' he had been looking for. Putting yourself out there, both literally _and _emotionally, and overcoming your own insecurities to show how much you loved someone… that had to be romantic, right? Granted, Kenny didn't know too much about romance, but Butters did, and he liked to think that maybe Butters' sentimentality had rubbed off a bit while they were dating and brought out that inner romantic he knew must exist somewhere inside him. His inner romantic thought this could be the elusive 'perfect moment' if executed well, and Cartman seemed to agree, so hopefully Butters would, too.

When the crowd parted slightly and Butters appeared a few feet in front of him, delivered courtesy of Stan and Kyle, it made Kenny feel both so much calmer and so much more nervous because this was happening, _this was actually happening_, and it was happening whether he wanted it to or not. His grip on the microphone tightened, made perilous and unstable from all the sweat slickening it. Fuck. He was clamming up really, really badly, and there were still so many people watching… He glanced down at the bulb of the microphone and then, in one resolute movement, turned it off. As far as he was concerned, there was no one else in the room besides him and Butters – just them, just how he'd wanted it to be – and he wasn't addressing a crowd of people, anyway. These words were meant for Butters and Butters alone. He looked up at Butters and smiled and Butters smiled back, the same one from earlier, but this time tinged with a sort of hapless confusion that was so adorable and so _Butters _that it instantly abated most of Kenny's fears. From this moment on, he would have selective tunnel vision. He wouldn't look at anyone but Butters, because he was always comfortable when it was just him and Butters and this way, everything felt a lot less weird. _I can do this_.

"Hey, Butters," he began, the words coming out softer and rawer than planned, but something told him to just roll with it. Butters' Adam's apple bobbed as he mouthed an inaudible greeting, and Kenny continued, "…If you were doing this, you'd probably be way better at it than me, but, you know… I'll try. I'm not really sure where to start. There's, um… I've got a lot to say." Deep breaths. Deep breaths. His eyes drifted shut, his shoulders locked, and then the tension was released. "So I'll just start from the beginning, I guess. I've always liked you, Butters. Ever since we were kids. You were really nice to me, even when you didn't know me that well, and you trusted everyone you met, which I thought was pretty great. I still think it is, actually. It's why I wanted to get to know you better. And you might not've realized all that, but… I don't think I was really good at showing it, you know, how much I wanted to be better friends with you. But you were smarter than me, so you were the one who decided we should start hanging out more, and you made it happen. You made it happen, and I'm… really, really, _really _thankful for that, because now you're one of the best friends I've ever had and, honestly? I wouldn't trade that for anything." He swallowed around the sudden aridness in his throat. "And that's why, when I found out about the whole therapy thing and how you liked me on top of that, I agreed to go out with you. Because – and I know this is gonna sound fucked up – I wanted to help. I thought it would be a good way to repay you for how nice you've always been to me, and I kind of have a Messiah complex, but… I thought, 'how bad can it be?' And that was the best part of the whole thing, Butters, because you know what?" There it was again: that haplessly confused yet admiring smile, now looking more than a bit curious. Kenny shook his head in wonderment and stepped forward one tentative pace. "The best part was that there _were _no bad parts. I thought it would at least be kind of awkward, especially since I was supposed to be 'pretending' to like you, but, uh… I didn't. I didn't have to pretend _anything_. We got together, and it was like… I couldn't believe what I'd been missing out on. You're a great friend, Butters, but you were an even better boyfriend. God, I just… if only you could see yourself the way _I _see you, you'd be so much more confident. You're amazing." Butters was blushing now, and it sort of made Kenny feel like the Grinch: like his heart had grown three times bigger. If only, if only… His fingers constricted around the length of the mute microphone. This, right here – this was the important part. Deep breaths. "You told me once that when you're in love with someone, you just _know_ it. And I'm sorry that everything had to go down like this. I'm sorry that I wasn't completely honest with you at the start, and I'm sorry that you had to find out about it the way you did. I'm sorry that I ended up hurting you, because I never, _ever _wanted that, but… I wouldn't take back any of it, even the bad stuff. Because if all of that shit hadn't happened, I might've never fallen in love with you. I don't know a lot, Butters, but I _do _know that I love you, and whatever it takes to get you to believe that… just tell me, and I'll do it. If it means we can be together again, I'll do it, whatever it is. Please believe me."

Had there been no blood rushing in his ears, Kenny would've noticed the complete and utter silence that had fallen upon the room. But as it currently stood, his senses were dulled, weakened to the point where the only things he found himself consciously aware of was the aforementioned rushing of blood in his ears and the sight of Butters, filling his vision with a parted mouth and pinking face and wide eyes and two eyebrows arched just above them. He watched Butters and waited for any sign of a concrete reaction, hopefully one of acceptance because Kenny didn't think he could handle a rejection right now. He'd handled all of this so far, the people watching and the mild stage fright and everything else, but if Butters _still _didn't believe him…

After what seemed like years, Butters' mouth snapped shut and he glanced at the ground, his expression unreadable. "Well, if all that's true…" he began, his voice just as unreadable and his expression remaining the same – except for his eyes, now crinkled at the edges and smiling up at Kenny through long lashes. "…How come you ain't kissin' me yet?"

Butters' grin was bright enough to put the sun to shame and Kenny knew instinctively that his grin was just as bright, that he'd _never _grinned this bright because he'd never felt anything so wonderful in 16 years of life. "I'm working on it," he managed to say around his near-crippling relief. The microphone slid out from his fingers and fell to his feet, and his feet moved and closed the distance between him and Butters, and those fingers were around the base of Butters' head and his lips were on Butters' and this, this would definitely go down as the faggiest moment in the history of South Park, but Kenny didn't care, Kenny didn't care about _anything _anymore because he was fucking _kissing Butters_ and he felt like he was finally getting everything he'd ever wanted. He'd only consciously wanted it for a couple weeks but that didn't diminish it, not at all. This was what he had wanted so bad it ached and this was what he was getting, and he was getting it in the most perfect way possible, and all of it was so damn perfect. Butters melting into him, leaning, body going almost completely slack, like the only thing that had kept him afloat was anxiety and longing for Kenny, and now that Kenny was here, now that he had him, everything came rushing out – perfect. Butters' hands, framing Kenny's face at first and then moving to his neck, to his shoulders, to his chest, and then back to his face again, like he wanted to touch as much of Kenny as possible but wasn't sure how – perfect. Butters' lips, moving against his with so much fervor and passion that it was able to convey a thousand words with none at all: _I love you and I missed you and I wanted this, I wanted _you_, and I'm sorry I didn't believe you before but I believe you now and I love you, I love you, I love you so much _– utter perfection. So maybe the reaction from the crowd was a bit lackluster. So maybe there was no huge, orchestral swell in the background, no literal fireworks bursting overhead. It didn't matter because Butters was looking at him with those big, soulful eyes of his, looking at him like Kenny was an angel sent down from heaven, and when Butters looked at him, Kenny felt as if the world could disintegrate around him and he wouldn't give a damn. Butters had this way of diminishing everything in comparison and making it so much more beautiful at the same time. It was just another item on a long list of things that Kenny loved about him.

Around them, people were shuffling back to life, the silence now broken by murmurs and the clank of shoes against plank flooring. To spectators, Kenny and Butters' novelty had already worn off – this was South Park, after all, and far more strange and exciting events had conspired in the past and were probably conspiring right at this very moment somewhere around town. Kenny didn't notice and wouldn't care either way. He'd always been a bit single-minded, and as it currently stood, every facet of that single-mindedness was focused entirely on Butters and the way Butters looked and the way Butters was looking at _him _and –. All that shit he used to think was so cheesy, the kind of shit prevalent in every movie pandering to the female demographic he'd ever been forced to watch? Staring deeply into someone's eyes, feeling their heartbeat, shit like that? That shit was good, and it was _real_, and not just real… it was happening to _him_. He rested his forehead against Butters', lightly passing the pad of one thumb over his cheekbone. In another world, the music came back on, playing some old, slow song from the 80s that Kenny vaguely recognized. "Hi," he said, a little dazedly, and it sort of felt like a huge understatement after what had just happened between them.

…Which was probably why Butters was giggling like a schoolgirl. "Hi, yourself," he replied, planting a soft, chaste kiss to Kenny's mouth, even as his fingers sifted through locks of burnished gold hair. Butters liked his hair, for some reason. That was another thing Kenny was pretty sure of. He ghosted the same thumb over Butters' lips, feeling a sudden rush of air against his skin as Butters sighed contentedly. "Oh, Kenny… I – I don't even know what to say… not after all of _that_…" The younger blond's eyes drifted shut for a moment in what appeared to be pretty intense thought, judging by the tiny little v-shaped wrinkle between his eyebrows. When they opened again, he placed both palms flat on the sides of Kenny's face, gentle yet firm. "I love you, Kenny McCormick," he said, "If I could, I'd give you so much – why, I'd give you just about anything – but all I can give you is my love, an' I know I don't got a whole lot ta offer 'cause I'm not good at much, but I think one thing I _am _good at is lovin' you. I got a lotta practice at that." The smile he offered Kenny was every bit as heartbreakingly honest as his words. "An', y'know… I might mess up a lot, but I always try my best, Kenny, even Eric'll tell ya that, but I'll try even better than my best just for you, 'cause boy howdy, you deserve it."

Kenny covered one of Butters' hands with his own, attempting to mentally configure a reply that _didn't _sound like a line from a fucking Bruno Mars song. "Butters," he began slowly, "You already give me a lot just by being yourself. What I said earlier…? I meant it. You're awesome." He gave the hand a reassuring squeeze. "Okay?"

Butters smiled graciously and twisted his hand to interlock with Kenny's, just barely returning the squeeze; _thank you, I understand, I'm here now_, it seemed to say, and it was small, but it was enough. His head drooped forward then and rested in the crook of Kenny's neck, another contented sigh making his shoulders rise and fall. He stayed like that for quite some time, apparently happy just to hold Kenny and be held back and stay like this in relative silence, and Kenny was perfectly fine with that, too. Every once in awhile, though, he would tilt his head to place a few soft, laving kisses along the base of Kenny's neck, fingers curling into his chest, and Kenny would have to gulp and look away because, well, it was almost too intimate for him to handle. He didn't think he'd ever get used to having someone's full and undivided attention on him – not even Butters'. Words had left him, so Kenny settled with running his hand up and down Butters' back and occasionally kissing the crown of his head. It was also small, but it was enough. "W-When didja know?" Butters eventually asked, propping his chin up on Kenny's shoulder to reinitiate eye contact.

"About what?"

Butters licked his lips. "Well, ya know," he mumbled. "When you realized you were… that you… um…"

"…When I realized I was in love with you?" Kenny finished bluntly, smiling when he heard the breath hitch in Butters' throat.

"Y-yeah," he replied, voice hoarse and eyes shining with amazement. "Golly, when you say it like that, it's… _wow_."

While Kenny's fingers toyed with Butters' chipper satin bowtie, his mind canvassed all the ways he could spin this story. Long version, replete with details about Hell and White Castle and end it with '_oh, Chef says hi_'? Dramatic version, embellishing his fits of drunken depression and the multiple viewings of _Moulin Rouge _that followed? Or the short version? "A little less than a week ago," he admitted, deciding the short route would be the best. "But I was in love with you before that… I think I might've even been in love with you when you told me that you loved me…" Butters was agape, a question already on his lips, but Kenny plowed onward. "I know what you're going to ask, and no, I didn't know I was in love with you when you told me. If I did, I would've said it back. I'm a dumbass, Butters, but I'm not an asshole. Most of the time."

The corners of Butters' mouth wobbled with a smile. "You ain't neither of those things, Ken," he said, dragging a middle and forefinger down the chiseled line of Kenny's jaw. "Just 'cause you didn't know how you felt… that don't make you dumb, it just means you… it makes you…"

"_Really _fucking dumb?" Kenny finished for him, grinning wryly. "Like, too fucking dumb to live? Because that's pretty much how I feel and I don't blame you for agreeing with me."

Butters chuckled, using the hand on Kenny's jaw to give him a playful warning pat. "Oh, shush. That's not what I was gonna say, a-an' you know it. Anyways. Not knowin' how you felt – that don't make you dumb." He paused to chew ruminatively on the inside of his cheek. "It just means you couldn't see the signs. Yeah, that's it. I reckon that's normal for most folks."

"So, in other words," Kenny prefaced, wry grin widening, "The seed of my love grew into a flower and it just took me a long-ass time to notice? I'm not stupid – I'm just a crappy gardener?"

Butters' expression mirrored his own. "Exactly," he said, pressing his forehead against Kenny's once more. Music was swirling all around them, heard only distantly; _in your eyes, the light, the heat_, it crooned… Two long arms wrapped around Kenny's neck, holding him close, swaying against him ever so slightly, and yeah, Kenny could _definitely _get used to this. "I'm kinda surprised you remembered all that, actually."

He nuzzled against Butters' cheek. "Hell yeah, I remembered. You're really hot when you talk in extended metaphors… and when you're wearing a tux… and pretty much all the time," Kenny murmured, moving his lips to graze against the other boy's ear. The skin warmed and reddened beneath his touch, accompanied by breathy laughter and a stammered-out reply of "o-oh, geez, um, I-I, aw, hamburgers, uh, you too" as he moved lower, trailing tiny nibbling kisses along the way. Now that Butters was back in his possession, he found it imperative to make up for the last two weeks spent apart. Each kiss became something of a silent apology, a recompense for every moment wasted by their separation: when he was guarding Butters during a game of basketball in gym class and it would've been so easy to lower his arms and hug him from behind; when Mr. Garrison, yet again, forced them to partner on an assignment and all he'd have to do was move his hand a few inches over and it'd be covering Butters'; when he saw Butters in the hallway and wanted to kiss him senseless up against a locker but didn't, couldn't, because they weren't a couple anymore and those things just weren't available. All those things that they used to do when they were dating, all those things that Kenny never stopped wanting to do… they could do them again. "I missed you so fucking much," he confessed sincerely.

"I know ya did, Ken," Butters replied, voice low and quiet. "I still got your note. It's, uh, I think I even got it on me right now." One of the hands that were loosely draped around Kenny's neck suddenly moved down between them, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of notebook paper. "Yep, there it is," he confirmed, a touch of fondness in his voice. "I've been keepin' it with me all the time. Whenever I got sad or lonely an' I missed you, I'd pull it out an' look at it, 'cause it made me feel a little better…" The more melancholy shift in Butters' words was enough to make Kenny pause and glance up. "…I looked at it a lot," he admitted quietly, and in that moment, Kenny knew that Butters had missed him just as much as he'd missed Butters. They'd been torturing themselves with this for weeks, thinking about each other and all of the things they'd wanted to do but couldn't, and now… and now…

Without thinking, Kenny brought his mouth crashing down upon Butters', curling all five fingers of one hand around downy blonde hair to hold him firmly in place. "When you gave me back my parka," he panted, peppering bits and pieces of sentences in between fierce, tenacious kisses, "It smelled like you – and I liked that – so I haven't worn it yet – because I'm afraid it'll stop smelling like you – is that creepy?"

"No," Butters replied, his voice bewildered and staccato from lack of breath. He looked adorably flustered with his hair all disheveled and his lips swollen from the sudden barrage of kisses, and Kenny didn't think he'd ever received this kind of treatment from anyone but Butters didn't seem to be complaining, not now, not with him kissing Kenny back just as passionately. "H'ain't creepy – it's – it's – oh, _Jesus, Mary an' Joseph_."

"I watched _Moulin Rouge _– 7 times," Kenny continued, nudging his hips forward a bit when Butters laughed appreciatively into his mouth, "I haven't looked yet – but I think I might've – grown a vagina – wanna check?"

Butters reared back slightly, gagged, reminded Kenny very seriously of the fact that he was gay (as if he could ever possibly _forget_), and then proceeded to all but shove his tongue into Kenny's mouth. Kenny interpreted this as Butters' polite way of telling him to shut up and took the hint gratefully. What kind of couple tried to hold a commiserating conversation while making out, anyway? They did, apparently, but Kenny was more than happy to stop talking and just focus on kissing Butters in all the ways he wanted to because now he _could_. He didn't have to worry about crossing the line, or overstepping his boundaries, or whether or not Butters actually wanted this too, because he did, and now they were kissing each other all messy and sloppy and in their own little Butters-and-Kenny way and it was like everything bad that had ever happened between them was unraveling, stripping away and falling to the floor, leaving them raw and fresh and renewed. They were young and a little unsure about where all of this was going but it didn't matter anymore because they had each other and they'd figure it out eventually. Maybe not right now, maybe not in a few days or weeks or months or even a year, but it would happen. Kenny was sure of it – as sure of it as he was sure that he loved Butters and Butters loved him, so sure because he could feel the success, feel it as palpable as he could feel Butters' heartbeats in the spaces between his own, and he knew that this was what he wanted. He wanted Butters and all of his little quirks and redundancies, good points and bad, and he always wanted to feel as they did in this moment, this perfect moment, all tender smiles and kisses and trust and no heartbreak and hope for the future. He was with Butters and he wanted it to stay that way.

"So," Kenny said when they pulled apart for air, "You're… you're with me now, right?"

Butters simply smiled and pressed the tip of his nose to Kenny's. "I never left."


	18. Epilogue

**A/N: **To anyone who's ever read this story, and/or reviewed, and/or added me/this story to your watch/favorites list: thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Your kind words have made these last 6 months some of the most beneficial and enjoyable of my life, and your feedback has been priceless to my writing. I really can't express enough how thankful I am for the response this fic has gotten. It just... blows me away. And occasionally makes me cry massive Clyde Donovan tears of joy, but only occasionally.

Here's the ending - the real, shameless, fluffy ending. I at least tried to make things come full circle, though. Hope you enjoy, and once again, thank you SO much for possessing the wherewithal to read this entire story from beginning to end. You guys are amazing.

**Disclaimer: **Don't own.

**Epilogue**

_Dear Diary:_

_Wow, I haven't wrote in this old thing in years… literally! I was looking through some stuff in my drawer when I stumbled upon this diary, and thought 'well, what the heck'? So I opened it up and just started looking through it, and boy, have things ever changed!_

_The last entry was a year and a half ago, first of all. I wrote it in November of junior year. At the time, I hadn't started dating Kenny yet… WEIRD! Before I read it, I couldn't even remember back that far! I guess that sounds kind of silly, but it's true: it's hard for me to imagine a life without Kenny as my boyfriend. He's just so good at it! Kenny's sweet, kind, funny, and, well, I ain't gonna gush about him too much. Especially because I've put it all down in here probably a million times before. Except for Kenny's mouth. I don't think I ever wrote about that, mostly 'cause I didn't know nothing about it back then, but – wow. Is he ever good with that mouth of his! I won't go into detail about it, though. My parents could read this, and they're (finally) all hunky-dory with us dating, but if they knew about the kinds of things me and Kenny do… well, they'd ground me for sure! Yeah, they still ground me sometimes, even though I'm going off to college in a couple months. Not as much as they used to, but I guess some things never change, huh?_

_I know __**I've**__ changed, though. Another thing that's different in the last entry was that I was still going to therapy. If I remember right, I think I went for another couple months after me and Kenny first started dating, and it was mostly because of Kenny that I stopped going. Mr. Mackey always said my main problem was being too gosh darn hard on myself, and looking back on it, I really was. I still am, sometimes – I think I kinda always will be – but I feel a whole lot better about myself now, thanks to Kenny. He never hollers at me for messing up and he compliments me a lot. Like when I got out of therapy and I told him that I thought I was finally fixed, and he said I was already perfect. Kenny's a little corny like that sometimes, but I love him for it. We'll be going to the same college in the fall. I know, I know; you're probably thinking I settled for some no-good, run-down school for delinquents 'cause that's the only kind that Kenny could get into, but it's actually not like that. Kenny and I worked real hard to bring up his grades, and eventually we got them up to solid B's and even a few A's! I'm so proud of him. _

_But enough about me and Kenny. Everyone else is doing great, too. Eric and Wendy are still together, which don't really surprise me. Those two were pretty much made for each other. They get in big fights sometimes, but that's just how they are, and I don't think they really mean none of the rude things they say about each other 'cause when they think no one's looking… why, they're just about the sweetest couple I've ever seen. As for Stan and Kyle, they're together for good now, I think. It wasn't always like that. They were breaking up and getting back together every couple of weeks for awhile there last year, but they've been going strong for a good 6 months now and I hope it'll stay that way. I think Stan just didn't know how to be in a long-term relationship 'cause of how things were with him and Wendy. Kenny thinks it's because Kyle has a small wiener, which he overcompensates for with his 'piss-poor personality' (Kenny's words, not mine), but I dunno. I'm happy for all of them. _

A warm summer breeze wafted in through the open window, briefly rustling the diary's pages before falling limp again. Butters Stotch leaned back in his desk chair, breathing in the scent of freshly-cut grass borne on the wind, and contemplatively touched the end of a pencil to his lips. What else could he write about? There was never a dull moment in a town like South Park, making it difficult to be accurate in chronicling its events. Things were always changing, ever-shifting and yet, in their own peculiar way, remained mostly the same. There was still the same old cast of townsfolk, each with their same old stubborn, small town-bred personalities… the only things to change were the semi-weekly national crises that somehow perpetually involved him, Kenny, Stan, Kyle and Cartman, plus the occasional celebrity to show up in their midst for no apparent reason, but those happened so often they became almost predictable in their unpredictability. The need to write even more scraped the back of Butters' mind, prickling at the tips of his fingers. But what?

"See, how he leans his pencil upon his lips! Oh, that I were the eraser upon that pencil, that I might touch those lips!"

At the sound of an all-too familiar voice, Butters swiveled around in the chair, his heartbeat already increasing in a way that had become routine over time. Perched agilely in the aperture of Butters' window was none other than Kenny McCormick, eyes closed, midday sun outlining the tufts of wild maize-colored hair that covered his head, which was tilted to the side in a gesture of dramatic detachment. After a moment, he opened one eye and smirked.

"Quotin' Shakespeare, I see?" Butters greeted, also attempting a smirk. He could never pull it off quite as well as Kenny, but dangnabbit, he tried.

Kenny's smirk ripened into a grin as he unfolded his legs and climbed down from the windowsill, maneuvering with a habitual expertise that came from many nights of childhood heroics. "I bet you think I'm smart now," he said, rows of white teeth popping out against freshly sun-kissed skin, "but I only conveniently remembered enough useless crap from high school to serenade you with."

"Lucky me," Butters replied, boasting a goofy smile that faded into a wince when Kenny strode over and, without hesitance, plopped himself down in Butters' lap. Though his height had eventually increased until he was at eye level with Kenny – a fact which Butters took great pride in – noticeable differences in stature still existed between them. "Geez Louise, Ken," he breathed, adjusting his lanky legs to better accommodate the added weight. "You're big."

"That's what she said!" Kenny shot back gleefully.

An embarrassed warmth flooded Butters' face when he realized the dirtier connotations of what he'd just said. Another thing that Butters took great pride in was the gradual lessening of his naiveté, an inevitable byproduct of being Kenny's boyfriend, so he now counted himself as one of the teenaged masses well-versed in dirty jokes and double entendres. Well-versed enough to tell when someone was using their 'downstairs brain', at least. "Bad Kenny," he admonished, using the pencil in his hand to tap the other boy's forehead. "I ain't talkin' about _that_. I meant that you're just too heavy for me."

"…Is that a fat joke?"

Butters looked from Kenny's dark blue eyes, narrowed in mock suspicion, down to his t-shirt-clad chest, passing over the two arms crossed over it, strengthened from his miscellaneous summer jobs, and glanced across the bowed curve of his angular legs, draped awkwardly over the opposite side of Butters' chair, then sighed. "No, it's a 'you're awful skinny, but I'm still a scrawny weakling' joke."

"Ah. I see." Kenny nodded sagely and made to clamber off of Butters, but stopped when something on the desk caught his attention. "You're doing homework over the summer?" he asked, snorting; amusement was practically dripping from the sound.

"Nuh uh," Butters protested, praying to God that they could get off this subject as soon as possible. If Kenny read some of the things he had written about him…

But, of course, because this was _Kenny _and Kenny was always curious, there was no way of stopping him now that his interest had been piqued. "Okay," he said slowly, "If you're not doing homework, then what the fuck are you writing?"

Fists bumping together chronically and eyes darting to and fro, Butters scoured the recesses of his mind for a suitable lie. A letter to his Grandma back in Georgia? No, too Melvin-ish… The beginning of his new novel? No, too reminiscent of the Scrotie McBoogerballs ordeal… "Um. W-Well, see, the thing is, it's a… a… hey!" The ensuing series of events went as follows: Kenny made a surreptitious grab for the diary, Butters tried to make a surreptitious grab _before _Kenny, and they both inexplicably (and _not_ surreptitiously) ended up on the bedroom floor with Butters sprawled atop Kenny.

"Um," the older blond said – intelligently so – as he gave a very long and pointed look at their current compromising position. "Yeah. I'm distracted now."

Butters sat up, clutching the diary to his chest, and glared at Kenny in what he hoped was a stern manner. "Now, you listen here, Buster Brown," he reprimanded, stomping down _hard _on the urge to protrude his lower lip. "You don't try any funny business with this-" One fist rapped against the diary's cover. "An' I won't try any funny business with you. Got it?"

Kenny stared at their adjoined hips, sucked on his lower lip ruminatively, and wiggled both blonde eyebrows at the boy on top of him. "If this is your idea of 'funny business', then holy shit, feel free to try it on me _anytime_."

"_Kenny_," Butters pleaded, all endeavors in sternness now abandoned as his eyes closed and his shoulders sagged with defeat. Normally, he didn't mind when Kenny was being all flirty and overtly sexual about everything – well, on some days, he downright loved it! But when Butters was legitimately trying to be serious and Kenny didn't respect him… Butters didn't really like that at all. A few moments passed by in nothingness, broken only when the soft, large curve of Kenny's palm cupped his cheek.

"You… really don't want me to look at that, do you?" he guessed quietly. Butters could hear the contrition in Kenny's voice, and when he opened his eyes, there was contrition all over Kenny's stupidly handsome face, too. He gave a tiny nod, to which Kenny replied with a sigh. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Butters said, a tentative smile already beginning to reappear on his lips. "I'm not sore at you. It's just… this is my diary, Kenny, an' I used to write about you a lot. Like, a _lot _a lot." He chuckled abashedly, awkwardly, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I was pretty lovesick."

One of Kenny's eyebrows lowered, the other trailing shortly after. "'Used to'?" he repeated, frowning just a bit, and Butters realized Kenny was under the impression that he wasn't worthy of being written about anymore. It was almost absurd enough to make him laugh. Almost, but not quite. He didn't want to wound Kenny's pride.

"I haven't wrote nothin' in it for nearly two years," Butters clarified, leaning down to plant a quick, chaste kiss on Kenny's lips. "Honestly, I forgot the silly ol' thing even existed 'til I found it this mornin', an I've been writin' ever since. That's what I was doin' when you showed up in my window, Romeo." Another kiss, this time to halt the compulsory flow of words from Kenny. "An' before you ask… yes, you're in it. Just don't get too cocky."

The formerly-apologetic expression which had been plastered across Kenny's countenance only moments earlier instantly melted, to be replaced by a wolfish grin. "Mmm, 'cocky'. I love when you talk dirty to me," he confessed, sliding two fingers beneath Butters' chin, and Butters had to laugh.

"I-I got lots more where that came from," Butters informed him eagerly, covering Kenny's mouth with his once more. Part of it was just because this was Kenny and he was Butters and they were _them _and he just really wanted to kiss Kenny again, but Butters was far more clever than he let on and he knew if there was one way to put this whole 'diary' issue to rest once and for all, it was this. Having consistently gotten A's in math class, and also having consistently possessed the power to turn Kenny into a virtual puddle of submissive goo, he'd developed a formula: Kenny + physical interaction (particularly of the sexual variety, though any sort would do) = happy Kenny. And yes, 'happy' was pretty much Kenny's default mood, but this specific brand of happiness fell under a more distracted phylum. Was it manipulation? Probably. Did Butters do it in only the most loving way possible? He liked to think so. Kenny didn't seem to mind, at least, if the voracious arch of his hands against Butters' backside was anything to go by.

The adjacent bedroom door squeaked open with another gust of wind, bringing with it the sounds of Mr. and Mrs. Stotch discussing something undoubtedly domestic in another part of the house. Now that the mood was effectively ruined, they both huffed out sighs of mutual exasperation and sat up, Kenny leaning against the side of the desk while Butters in turn leaned against him. "To what do I owe the great pleasure of your presence?" Butters asked, fingers lacing together atop Kenny's broad shoulders in a makeshift chinrest. With the ankle of one leg, he slid the now-forgotten diary underneath his bed, something that didn't appear to go unnoticed by Kenny. A white sliver appeared above the curvature of his cobalt irises, but he made no comment. "Somethin' serious? Or are you just droppin' by?"

Kenny smiled faintly, distractedly. Butters wondered if he should maybe commemorate the occasion in a journal entry. _July 22__nd__: Distracted Kenny from diary, avoided humiliation over how much of a squealing little girl I used to be over him. _ "I didn't realize I needed a reason to see you," he murmured, burying his nose in clumps of short, duck-fluff blond hair, briefly skimming his lips over Butters' temple.

"'Course you don't. I love seein' you," Butters replied, earnest, and scooted closer to Kenny's side. "I was just wonderin'."

The look Kenny shot him was one of appraisal, of humor, of vague affectionate amusement. Sometimes Kenny would look at him like that for no real reason at all, when they were lolling on opposite sides of Butters' bed in the middle of a homework session or while standing in line at McDonald's to get a Shamrock Shake (Kenny's favorite) or during any other mundane, meaningless, everyday activity, really. There was no rhyme or reason for this; none that Butters could see, anyway. Kenny would just glance over at him sometimes with his face all crinkly from laugh lines and the edges of his mouth turned upward in a tiny smile and sometimes it would be because of something Butters said – he had a tendency toward being unintentionally amusing – and sometimes, Butters wouldn't be saying nor doing anything. Sometimes the look was accompanied by a quick peck. Sometimes a long kiss. Sometimes a fond hair-ruffle. Every time, it was like this little Post-It note being stuck to his heart, like 'oh, hi, that's Kenny, you're really, really in love with him, and for some reason, he's really, really in love with you, too'. As if Butters could ever forget, but occasional reminders were always nice. "Well," Kenny said, in that overly casual way which suggested he was about to say something kind of important. He looked down at his hands. "I've scraped together some money, and I was wondering if you'd like to go out on a date. With me."

"Why, I sure hope it'd be with you," Butters teased, poking Kenny's cheek playfully. "Who else would I be goin' out with?"

Kenny looked up and away, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. "Hm. One of the assholes I beat the shit out of on my way up to your window?"

"So you know 'bout m-my wide assortment of suitors, then," Butters stated, eyes widening in mock surprise. "Aw, heck. The feller you beat up… he wasn't blonde, was he? 'Cause that one was my favorite."

Kenny gave a very frustrated, very exaggerated snap of his fingers. "No, but damn it all, I should've known. You and your fucking blonds, dude." They grinned at each other, all big and goofy and teeth like the sun, and then Butters moved the finger from Kenny's cheek to trace curlicues on the back of his hand. "So. It's a date?"

There was a hesitant slant to Kenny's mouth as he said this, and Butters wondered if he realized that it was virtually impossible for him to turn down Kenny. "Yep!" he affirmed, beaming. Excitement was already beginning to fizzle up inside of him. "When are we leavin'?"

Kenny did that coy, 'looking up and away' thing again, pairing the nonchalant gesture with an equally lackadaisical shrug. "I was thinking, like, right now, if that's cool with you."

The red numbers on Butters' digital clock blinked at him from across the room. "You wanna take me out on a date," he began flatly, "at 12:34 in the afternoon? Gosh, isn't that a little early?"

"Guess I'm just impatient," Kenny replied, rolling to his feet in one swift, fluid motion. The way Kenny moved, like he consistently felt comfortable in his own skin… that was something Butters had always been, and probably always would be, jealous of. He stuck one hand into the pocket of his jeans, extending the other one to Butters. "And if I wait any longer, my Dad'll personally try to mug me. Come on. It'll be fun. Please?"

Dates were something of a big deal to Kenny. Butters supposed that dates were something of a big deal to most couples, but for him and Kenny, 'real' dates, the kind that involved money and going out to public places and _money_, took precedence simply due to their rarity. Being that Kenny was poor and Butters didn't have a steady inflow of cash, making him also poor by extension, the few occurrences when they hit that elusive combination of the right time and the right amount of money were quite momentous. Things had been that way during their first run as a couple, but it was even more prominent this time around. And as much as Butters got excited for dates – and boy, did he ever get excited for them – Kenny got even more so, an excitement that was tinged with a strong (and, unfortunately, seldom experienced) sense of pride. The least Butters could do was go along with the odd timing and match his enthusiasm. "I'll do it," he said, pulling himself up with Kenny's outstretched hand. "But only 'cause you said 'please'."

There it was again, that _look_, and Butters actually had to subconsciously place one hand over his stomach just in case all the butterflies fluttering around in there decided to burst out, like the aliens in that scary movie Eric had once forced him to watch and afterwards recorded his responding screams of terror on a Wellington Bear tape. "Okay. Sweet," he said, eyes curving upward in a happy little Kenny squint. Already, one arm was draped around Butters' shoulders, guiding him toward the door while an upbeat song filtered past Kenny's mouth, quiet, staccato, muffled – he never could quite sing clearly. Butters smiled at the quirk and moved in closer, as if attempting to cement himself irremovably into the fold of Kenny's arm, but soon halted when one thought blared in his mind: _the diary_.

Sighing apologetically now, Butters placed one hand gently on Kenny's chest and ducked away. "Kenny," he began, hesitantly biting his lower lip, "could you, uh… meet me outside? I-I'll be down in a coupla minutes, promise – there's just some stuff I gotta finish up in here."

Kenny blinked, eyebrows furrowing, but smiled and gave a nod of understanding anyway. He was always understanding, always willing to deal with Butters and his many oddities and defects as if they were normal and he was specifically equipped to deal with them. It was like his specialty or something. "Sure, yeah," he said, easygoing as ever. Butters smiled when he leaned in to kiss Kenny, smiled when Kenny's arms hugged his waist for the briefest of moments, and smiled when Kenny walked toward the window in preparation to leave, because climbing into people's windows and trying to read their diaries and cracking "that's what she said" jokes and asking them out on dates and jumping out the window to leave was just what Kenny _did _and darn it all if it didn't make Butters smile. Kenny could always make Butters smile. That was his other specialty.

"Hey." Kenny had one leg slung over the windowsill, the other dangling just a fraction of a centimeter above the bedroom floor, straddling two worlds: Theirs and Not Theirs, both of which he fit into perfectly, but Butters couldn't help the thought that maybe Kenny fit just a little bit more perfectly into Their world, like he was cut out from special cloth and tailor-made just to fit into the fabric of Butters' life. His voice was quiet when he spoke. "I love you. You know that, right?"

Butters smiled a just-for-Kenny smile.

"I know," he said, and he meant it. "I love you too, Ken."

In that moment, Butters thought Kenny looked brighter than the cerulean summer sky framing him from behind. He nodded again, made some gruff, joking comment about going to "eliminate the competition", and then he swung his other leg over the windowsill and was gone, just like that, diving recklessly into the Not Theirs. Butters stared at the window for a long pause, at the space where Kenny used to be, and then he scooped the diary up from the floor and flopped onto his bed. Its edges were frayed a bit and there was a little piece of tape holding the binding together, so it didn't look all that important. And maybe it wasn't. Idealistic thoughts on life and love, vapid observations, insubstantial information, aimless musings. That's all it was, in the end. That's all any of the pages boiled down to. But this, this small, insubstantial, unimportant thing… it had led him to Kenny, hadn't it? In some completely messed up, entirely convoluted fashion, it had found its way into Eric's hands and then to Kenny's mind and then they started dating and somehow, inexplicably, Butters had found _his _way into Kenny's heart. So maybe the words inscribed into the diary's pages themselves weren't important. What those words had inadvertently done, however – _that_ was important, and that had changed Butters forever, and now that he was presented with the opportunity to bring some closure to an important chapter of his life, _this _moment felt kind of important, too. With a pencil poised just above the paper and his tongue poking out between columns of teeth, he reread the previous four paragraphs and thought of the people and the lives described within. Eric and Wendy, who would probably someday get married and have a couple babies, babies that Eric would try to spoil and Wendy would counteract by spoon-feeding them with extensive knowledge, and they would fight about politics over the dinner table and bang their fists and unintentionally educate those babies in the finer points of swearing, but that's okay, they would be fine. Stan and Kyle, who would probably open up some quaint little restaurant somewhere far from South Park, and Kyle would yell at the customers and Stan would look up from his guitar all calm and Stan-like and fix the problem, and maybe all the weirdness that had forever tormented them in their hometown would follow them there, too, but that's okay, they would be fine. Him and Kenny, who would go to college together and build a nice A-frame house somewhere in the mountains, where they'd live with a few dogs (Butters' stipulation) and no rats (Kenny's stipulation) and maybe an adopted kid from a broken home (they could both relate to that), and maybe Butters would always be a little neurotic and Kenny would always be a little dense but that's okay, they would be fine. Words, words, words. So many words. Pencil tip met paper, his hand gliding across the sheet in quick, assured strokes, and when he was done, he set both of them on the bedspread and ran downstairs, crammed his feet into some sneakers, and went outside to where Kenny was waiting for him, where Kenny was always waiting for him.

Inside, another breeze passed over open pages and one fresh, bold graphite sentence stood out between rows of light blue: _Everything's going to be okay. _

And he believed it.

**THE END**


End file.
